A couple of days ago, I posted about The Most Glorious Thing Ever Created™, a.ka. Bacon Salt. Well, the makers of Bacon Salt were nice enough to send me a sample of their whole line (and, confusingly, a beer caddy). So lucky me, I get to taste all varieties this intoxicating spice. And lucky you, just for reading this post all the way to the bottom, you can win your own sampler pack of Bacon Salt, courtesy of Modern Materialist. Keep reading to find out how!
Until that point, though, you’ll just have to read my live-blog review of Bacon Salt (or, I guess you could scroll to the end if you really wanted to):
- First off, the smell is pungent from the moment you open the box; even though these are in plastic bottles, and well sealed, Bacon Salt smells like bacon. Yum.
- There are four varieties in total to try today: Original; Hickory; Peppered; and Natural. As implied by this, the other three are artificially flavored, and the natural is, well, naturally flavored. Though, least we forget, there’s no actual bacon in any of these. They’re all zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian, and kosher. Which is crazy.
- I’m going to try the original first. Opening it up, the Salt smells pungently of bacon… Or rather, it smells a lot like Baco Bits, which makes sense when you think about it.
- And now I’m about to do something for you guys that’s killing me a little bit. In order to take good pictures of this, I’m going to dump a cocaine sized pile out of the jar, rather than save all the sweet, delicious salt for myself. What I do for you guys:
- The big question, of course, is how does it taste? The answer is: really, really salty. And, kind of spicy. The first ingredient is sea salt, followed by garlic and paprika, which you can definitely taste the most. It’s certainly tasty, though I don’t know if I would characterize it as “bacony.” There’s also definitely a nice, though not too strong, spice aftertaste.
- Moving on to the Hickory, the initial smell is far sweeter than the Original flavor. It’ll be interesting to see if that comes through into the flavor. I’ll also mention, which I’m not sure how well you can see in this picture, that the Hickory Salt is not as smoothly grained as the Original, and there seems to be bits of something I’m going to guess is hickory?
- Okay, so definitely sweeter than the Original. I think the paprika helped cut through the saltiness a bit, so I’d rank the Original higher than the Hickory so far. That being said, there’s a nice hickory smoke flavor apparent on a second taste, and a good deal of spice right in the back of my throat.
- Despite my initial impression, I found myself going in for a third taste of the Hickory, which I didn’t do with the Original. I think it’s growing on me.
- Onto the Peppered, which smells milder than the other two, and is way chunkier:
- Wow, that’s peppery. Yum. I would actually say this tastes far more like bacon than the other two. Not only that, it brings the sweet of the Hickory, and the spice of the Original together extremely well. It tastes like Peppered Bacon. This is definitely my favorite so far, though it’s also far spicier than either of the others.
- Finally, the Natural. Not only does this come freshness sealed, and in a slightly smaller canister than the other three, it has far less ingredients. I actually can’t really smell it at all, honestly. It may be that my nose is suffused with the other three at this point, or that the natural flavors are more muted. It also looks far less processed than the others; though, ironically, far more orange. Which, again, I don’t know how well you can see:
- This is… This one is not that great. It tastes strongly of onion and salt, and that’s it. I’m not getting any bacon at all, which is disappointing. I guess artificial flavors are the way to go, when you’re trying to reproduce meat flavoring, without any meat?
In summation, Peppered is pretty glorious, and I highly recommend it, while the Hickory and Original are very good spice mixes, without necessarily tasting of Bacon.
So, how do I win me some, you’re probably wondering? Well, it’s easy:
- Comment on this post.
That’s it. I don’t need a story about bacon, or a reason why should win, though you’re welcome to post those below. All you need to do is write a comment on this post, and leave some way for me to contact you (enter your Nerve account, a link to your website, etc.)
In fact, since I'm a super nice guy, any one of you can enter to win as many times as you want! The only catch is that they can't be in a row. Meaning, as soon as someone else comments, you can comment below 'em; but you can't comment directly below your own comment.
Next week, I’ll check back with the comments, do a random drawing from a hat, and the winner will get their very own variety pack of Bacon Salt. No more complicated than that!
Thanks again to the guys over at Bacon Salt for providing their delicious product.
Related: Where's The Bacon?
