Everything's better with bacon! Over 45 bacon-rich recipes for main dishes, appetizers, salads, breads, side dishes, inspiring cocktails, and desserts - Make the perfect BLT , chive & bacon cornbread, bacon breakfast pizza, bacon caramel milkshake, bacon Bloody Mary, and more - Make your own bacon from scratch at home, with easy instructions starting with pork belly - Learn how to cure pork with traditional methods of dry curing and wet curing - Explore artisanal varieties including applewood smoked, peppered, maple bourbon-flavored, apple-cider-cured, and more - Tips for perfect cooking including pan-fried, broiled, roasted, and even microwaved methods Celebrate the sizzle and sensation that is bacon! Once only a simple side dish to an ordinary breakfast, bacon has become the culinary world's sizzling star, and practically risen to the status of its own food group! For dinner, for dessert, for cocktails, bacon is the most delectable and versatile of foods, the "meat candy" of the culinary world, capable of improving everything it meets. While bacon may be the "it" ingredient of today's foodies, it is by no means a new creation, and this book opens with a short fun chapter titled "The Tasty History of Bacon." In this colorful volume, professional chefs, experienced artisans, and expert butchers offer guidance about today's various forms of artisanal and heritage varieties. A party for shameless carnivores, Bacon revels in the unlimited ways this versatile, delectable "food candy" can improve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and your snacks, too. This mouthwatering book presents more than 45 irresistible recipes using various types of bacon, from store-bought to your own homemade slabs. Create the perfect BLT and sumptuous bacon mac and cheese, then explore wild spins on everyone's favorite pork, such as bacon-studded biscuit cinnamon rolls, bacon blondies, bacon and kale savory bread pudding, and apple-maple-bacon muffins. The mouthwatering recipes in this book offer home chefs hundreds of ideas for all three meals of the day as well as inspiration for jazzing up cocktails, late-night snacks, desserts, salads, side dishes, soups, and stews. Thorough introductory chapters will help you understand traditional methods of dry curing and wet curing pork; take a look at artisanal and heritage varieties of bacon, such as applewood smoked, southern dry cured, peppered, maple bourbon-flavored, apple-cider-cured, and traditional smoked; and explore the best ways to cook bacon, whether pan-fried, broiled, roasted, or microwaved. You'll also find tips for choosing the best sources for purchasing bacon, or follow easy steps to make your own bacon from pork belly, curing with salt, and smoking with various types of wood, as well as the best ways to prepare bacon. Bacon will forever change the home cook's outlook on daily meals, entertaining friends and family, and that occasional midnight snack, by adding some magic sizzle! From pork belly to sizzling joy, find unexpected ways to reinvent ordinary dishes, with Bacon ! Bacon S tripped of its ordinary side-dish origins, bacon is the culinary world's new sizzling star. A party for shameless carnivores, Bacon revels in the unlimited ways this versatile, delectable "food candy" can improve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and your snacks, too. Offering more than 45 sensational recipes—from the perfect BLT and bacon and kale savory bread pudding to apple-maple-bacon muffins and a bacon bloody Mary— Bacon will forever change the home cook's outlook on daily meals, entertaining friends and family, and that occasional midnight snack. Inside Bacon You'll Find: Expert guidance on choosing bacon and the best ways to prepare it - Tips on making your own bacon at home from experienced artisans - Unexpected ways to reinvent ordinary dishes with some magic sizzle - 45+ original recipes for main dishes, appetizers, salads, breads, side dishes plus inspiring cocktails and desserts With a background in newspaper journalism and more than eighteen years in magazine publishing, Southern California native Amy K. Hooper works as editor in chief of special interest publications at I-5 Publishing LLC in Irvine, California. Previous publications include Canning & Preserving , Homemade Bread , Meat & Sausage , Vegetable Gardens , Patio Gardens , Beekeeping , Guide to Chicken Breeds , Ducks , Advanced Backyard Birding , Training Secrets for Rescued Dogs , American Pit Bull Terriers , Dog Fancy , Hawaii Magazine and WildBird .