This book celebrates the sizzle and sensation that is bacon. Once a side dish to an ordinary breakfast, bacon has 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 the book opens with a short fun chapter titled The Tasty History of Bacon. In this colorful volume, professional chefs and butchers offer tips about today's various forms of artisanal and heritage varieties. Bacon presents more than 45 recipes, from the perfect BLT and bacon mac and cheese to wild spins on everyone's favorite pork, such as bacon-studded biscuit cinnamon rolls, bacon blondies, bacon and kale savory bread pudding, and bacon Snickers milkshake. The mouthwatering recipes in this book offer homecooks 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. The book also offers tips for choosing the best sources for bacon and making bacon from pork belly, curing with salt, and smoking with various types of wood, as well as the best ways to prepare bacon. INSIDE BACON: From pork belly to sizzling joy: easy steps to making bacon from scratch Understanding traditional methods of dry curing and wet curing pork 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 More than 45 irresistible recipes using various types of bacon, from store-bought to your own homemade slabs Exploring the best ways to cook bacon: pan-fried, broiled, roasted, or microwaved