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I once read that Dorothy Parker used to eat raw bacon because she was too lazy to cook it. The idea freaks me out, but I grew up with a grandmother who was terrified of Trichinosis and passed that fear on to me, even though it's been pretty much eradicated.
I have no problem with raw bacon. I have quite often eaten raw "lardons" ( unsmoked as well as smoked) and even bits of bacon strips whilst cooking and never once been sick. I actually quite like the taste and texture. I think it is not that uncommon in Europe actually.
Just the thought of this makes me want to vomit. Safe or not, the whole idea of eating it raw is more than I can stomach. I gag on it even if it is cooked, but not crisp.
If it's cured bacon it's really not raw in the technical sense -- but how would you ever manage to get your teeth through the spongy, rubbery strips of fat, let alone detach a piece and chew it well enough to get it down the hatch?
My great-grandmother, who immigrated here from Germany when she was a child in the late 1800's, ate raw bacon all her life. She lived to be 97 y/o, too...broke her hip from a fall and she never made it out of the hospital.
The peasants working in the fields would pack a piece of bread, a piece of szalonna coated with paprika, and a raw onion and hot wax pepper (and of course some wine or schnapps) and eat their lunch in the shade of some mulberry or elderberry trees, thereby not wasting precious daylight time walking back to the house to take lunch and then return to the field. While most present-day Hungarians probably aren't toiling much on farm fields, they are still eating the same foods. Their 'bacon' is smoked and cured, and quite safe to eat 'raw'. It is a shelf stable food, kept in a pantry vs. refrigerated (or god forbid frozen).
When my aunt came to visit and she watched me frying our Sunday bacon, she was visibly bothered by what she saw. I asked her if there was something wrong, and she finally revealed that she just wanted to have her portion without frying, which I of course agreed to. She took a whole onion and sliced it thinly in her hand in such a way where it was still held together at the top and fanned out at the base. She sprinkled salt between the layers of onion and ate it with the bacon (which she had generously dusted with Hungarian paprika) and you would think she had died and gone to heaven by the expression on her face.
I think we should remember, what seems strange to us may be someone's normal, and what we consider commonplace is seen as bizarro world to some people from elsewhere. Most relatives visiting the US from Eastern Europe can't get used to the food around here. I learned something from them though, something I hadn't noticed myself but now agree - Americans sweeten everything. Beans, bread, cured meats, crackers, pickles, etc. all are sweetened, which to most Eastern Europeans seems, well, disgusting. Truth be told, we really should wean ourselves from the sugar addiction.
The peasants working in the fields would pack a piece of bread, a piece of szalonna coated with paprika, and a raw onion and hot wax pepper (and of course some wine or schnapps) and eat their lunch in the shade of some mulberry or elderberry trees, thereby not wasting precious daylight time walking back to the house to take lunch and then return to the field. While most present-day Hungarians probably aren't toiling much on farm fields, they are still eating the same foods. Their 'bacon' is smoked and cured, and quite safe to eat 'raw'. It is a shelf stable food, kept in a pantry vs. refrigerated (or god forbid frozen).
When my aunt came to visit and she watched me frying our Sunday bacon, she was visibly bothered by what she saw. I asked her if there was something wrong, and she finally revealed that she just wanted to have her portion without frying, which I of course agreed to. She took a whole onion and sliced it thinly in her hand in such a way where it was still held together at the top and fanned out at the base. She sprinkled salt between the layers of onion and ate it with the bacon (which she had generously dusted with Hungarian paprika) and you would think she had died and gone to heaven by the expression on her face.
I think we should remember, what seems strange to us may be someone's normal, and what we consider commonplace is seen as bizarro world to some people from elsewhere. Most relatives visiting the US from Eastern Europe can't get used to the food around here. I learned something from them though, something I hadn't noticed myself but now agree - Americans sweeten everything. Beans, bread, cured meats, crackers, pickles, etc. all are sweetened, which to most Eastern Europeans seems, well, disgusting. Truth be told, we really should wean ourselves from the sugar addiction.
I think raw bacon feels pretty slimy. I would never eat it right out of the package. I would guess the cholestrol in it would be worse because cooking the bacon cooks some of that fat out.
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If the bacon will go bad in an unopened package, it hasn't been cured enough to safely eat raw - and that's how it used to be. Things have changed, bacon tastes different now, so it's possible they found some way to sterilize it.
Most raw cured meats have been so processed that they are too salty and dry for bacteria etc to live on them. Beef jerky, italian salamis (I think), country hams and country bacon are examples of that.
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