January 17, 2007
MANNA FROM HEAVEN:
Bacon drippings jazz up popcorn (San Jose Mercury News, 1/17/07)
Didn't get enough bacon at breakfast, lunch and dinner? Popping corn in bacon fat is a sure-fire way to add rich flavor to the homey snack.Joanna Pruess, author of ``Seduced by Bacon,'' suggests substituting fat reserved from cooking bacon for the oil or butter in the basic directions for popping corn:
Warm 3 tablespoons of fat in a heavy 3-quart saucepan with lid. Add 1/3 cup of kernels, or enough to cover the bottom of the pan in a single layer. Raise heat to medium and cover pan, shaking it gently to keep kernels from burning. When first few kernels begin to pop, remove the pan from the heat for exactly 1 minute. Then return pan to fire and continue shaking until the corn stops popping.
If you're honest you'll be able to admit that just reading that had a strangely Viagra-like effect on you....
MORE:
Bacon's new sizzle: UPSCALE BRANDS, A CHANGE IN TASTES HELP MAKE IT HOT AGAIN (Aleta Watson, 1/17/07, Mercury News)
Back in the day, we saved bacon drippings in a strainer jar. Anything my mom fried, was fried in bacon drippings, period.
Posted by: jdkelly at January 18, 2007 9:00 AMjd: Same here. We also used the drippings to pop some of the best popcorn ever. There weren't chips, etc. in our house growing up. Plenty of popcorn though.
Posted by: Bartman at January 18, 2007 3:23 PMI used to think that cooking everything in animal fat was a Polish thing. The Polish grandparents did so, and lived to good old ages, as long-lived as the olive-oil Italian grandparents
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 19, 2007 7:08 AM