It seemed like it was only last week when Mike and I made some Elvis sandwiches. When I went shopping prior to that round of sandwiches, I bought both regular bacon and turkey bacon as well (the “60% Less Fat” tagline intrigued me).
To get the full Elvis-experience, we used the regular bacon that time. But, of course, that meant that we still had the turkey bacon for more sandwiches some other time. And, over the weekend, we decided to make another batch.
When first opening the turkey bacon package, we both noticed that it had an aroma similar to baloney. This was obviously a baconized product not coming from a natural bacon-producing animal as the package noted that the white stripes contained white meat, while the dark stripes contained dark meat (as opposed to the white stripes being just fat).
So, we were a little creeped out by this bacon masquerade, but we decided to push on. The tacon — as we took to calling it — cooked more like meat strips than actual bacon. Because the white strips were actually meat and not fat, the bacon didn’t shink much in its cooking cycle; and there was hardly any liquid fat in the pan afterwards.
Though the tacon may have been baloney-esque at the beginning, it was surprisingly bacon-like after cooking. It had a pleasant crunch (though not as crispy as bacon) and was more-or-less bacony (not bad for 60%-less-fat!). Of course, after we cooked the bacon, we proceeded to assemble and grill the sandwiches themselves.
In all, we made four sandwiches (two each) and I was curious whether they would stand up to the real-bacon versions. They were good sandwiches — surprisingly tasty — but they didn’t quite match up to those first sandwiches that we made with bacon. It wasn’t that the bacon-flavor was that bad, but it just didn't have the intensity of real bacon.
The tacon turned out better than I expected. But, I probably wouldn’t buy it again. Sure, it had less fat, but an Elvis sandwich is something that I wouldn’t eat very often anyway. And, if I’m going to have a bad-for-me sandwich, it may as well taste great :).