Forget haute dogs, have a bacon truffle instead

I love a good rasher of bacon as much as the next person. It's the kind of convenient snack you can fashion into a simple sarnie with a dollop of ketchup. Equally, you can easily find yourself relaxing at home on a Sunday with a typical English fry up on your lap, with a few rashers of bacon looking quite at home on the plate.

Unless you’re a veggie - and apologies to you if you are, we'll forgive you if you decide to give this article a miss - then I need to invite you to read on because I think you’re missing out. Missing out on what? Missing out on Bacon Connoisseurs Week, which runs each year thanks to LovePork.co.uk and is taking place next week - from the 18th to the 24th March.

“Hold up!” I hear you shout, “Bacon week is a thing?”

I found myself asking the same question when I first heard about it. To put it simply, it is literally every bacon lover’s dream. It gives you the chance to spend an entire week venturing around London learning about the 300 different types of bacon that we could be choosing from. It promotes good quality, local brands.
No longer shall we have to settle with Tesco’s own brands. Which, thinking about it, is probably a good choice seeing as those meats never seem to contain exactly what it says on the package.

If you ask me there just aren’t enough places to go out for a meal that have a focus on this meat stape, aside from your local greasy spoon. Haute dogs are in abundance. Pulled pork is found everywhere. But bacon? Not so much. So with the option to head to a restaurant not existing at the moment and with very few people being happy about a day out to a pig farm for a meet-and-greet with the animal that is eventually going to become a hot meal, I am very excited to introduce to you Niamh Shields, an award winning food blogger.

Because this year, porcine partisans have the chance to join in a limited edition bacon master class held by Niamh. Doesn't becoming a master in bacon sound just so delicious? She's hosting three and a half hour bacon cooking courses on the 20th and the 22nd March for £75. It might sound a lot to begin with, but have you ever heard of Chipotle Bacon, Bacon Fudge or Bourbon Bacon Chocolate Truffles? Unless you're a foodie (or just really love a good rasher) I don’t think you would have.

You'll learn how to make all three of these delectable - or disgusting, depending on your opinion - dishes. BUT WAIT, there's more. You also get to take your creations home along with your recipe cards and an entire goody bag of... bacon! What else did you think it was going to be?! What could be better than a night out, learning new dishes AND bringing home the bacon*? You can sign up by clicking here, and with an extra incentive of a Bacon Bloody Mary cocktail to begin the evening, there really isn’t much more that could be added to your outing to make it any better.

We'll be featuring a few bacon-inspired recipes throughout Bacon Connoisseurs Week. If you have a recipe you'd like to share, get in touch!




*did you really think we wouldn't try and squeeze that pun in?

Shannon is a very proud British girl, with a love for a cup of tea and an evening curled up with her cats watching Notting Hill. You'll often find her dusting off the mud after a day with her unpredictable pony Rocky. A procrastinator, she spends most of her time practicing these skills as opposed to doing anything she's meant to be doing.