Yes, it’s a “sandwich” containing bacon, cheese and Colonel’s sauce, with two fried chicken patties serving as the bread.  Now some of you may be thinking, “Eick, I thought So Good was supposed to be on the cutting edge? I already read about this someplace else, why didn’t you see this sooner?” Valid question, and one the 15 (no exaggeration) people who have e-mailed me about this new product have asked.

I actually came across this last week, in the form of a post on Food Geekery that dated all the way back to July 28.  But do you know why I didn’t write about it right away? I didn’t believe it. Thought it was a fake. A spoof. A hoax. No WAY a national chain is actually using pieces of chicken as buns I thought. Considering it’s been a few months since I broke a major story on So Good, despite having done it quite often last year, I thought this was my golden bullet. I was going to expose the Double Down as a grand and elaborate hoax and reap the traffic benefits as everyone praised So Good for exposing the fraud that was the Double Down.  I Googled around. I read and re-read the post on Food Geekery. I freeze framed parts of the commercial on YouTube for clues that it might be a fake. At one point I even thought some of the “evidence” it was a hoax was that one of the actors in the commercial kind of, sort of, looked like one of the sketch comedy actors from Barats & Bereta.

With no clear evidence confirming or denying this products existence beyond the one initial source online,  I called the location in Nebraska where Foodgeekery allegedly bought this. No answer when I called twice on Thursday. When I called back on Friday, they did answer, and informed me that yes, they carried the Double Down sandwich.  Dammit. I was all primed to be the one that exposed to the world the great hoax that was the KFC Double Down. Alas, I was wrong. Dead wrong. And with that, my motivation to write about it before leaving the office vanished. The weekend awaited. That magical time of sleep, sex, drinking, more drinking, watching baseball and sleeping again.  The story would have to wait, because the sandwich is real, and it’s being tested in Nebraska and Rhode Island.

There were other skeptics out there, which is why Foodgeekery went BACK to the KFC and snapped a few confirmation photos:

KFC public relations finally got into the act and shared their “estimated” nutritional info with Huffington Post. They claim it is 590 calories with 31g of fat and 10g of saturated fat.

I don’t need to make some grand proclamation about what this sort of food offering says about our culture. I think these photos pretty much speak for themselves.

Additional coverage on Consumerist, This is Why You’re Fat and Slashfood.

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In no way am I calling for a bacon boycott.  I will still consume bacon on a semi-regular basis.

I’m just sick of the saturation.  Bacon in every food imaginable.  Bacon on t-shirts.  Bacon lube.  Bacon alternative fuel.  Bacon-replicas of famous bacon-cities and bacon-landmarks.  Bacon  has made its mark, but something occurred two days ago that made me believe that bacon is over.

Eick gives me coupons for free Taco Bell, so of course my interest is piqued by whatever insane burrito/taqui/nacho creation they are featuring.  In this case, it is the blood pressure escalator New Bacon Cheesy Potato Burrito. Stare at the picture.  Become mesmerized by the weird ground beef.  The strange bacon pieces.  The traditional oozing cheese, sour cream and special sauce exuding from within.

My first bite is awful.  All potato and sour cream.  And with the second bite, I encounter something soggy, wet, and long.  I pull it out of my mouth quickly.  BACON.  Not a neat little bacon crisp as shown in the advertisements, but a terrifying microwaved bit of porkstuff that had not crisped.  It has simply gone limp, like the body of a drowning victim.

Eating an entire Bacon Cheesey Potato Burrito is possible.  One must be intoxicated, and not eating any breakfast or lunch should help.  Otherwise, you’re in a for a horrible state of being – over-full.  You know, that feeling you get after you accidentally eat a foot-long sub even though you promised your girlfriend you’d save the other half for later?  Or you eat five plates of China Buffet King just because?  Any simple task after this act of consumption terrorism is simply impossible.  It’s as if your stomach is holding your body prisoner.  And the bacon……….oh man…

I tried.  I really did.  I wanted to write a point-by-point review of this Bacon Abomination, but my taste buds and stomach told me otherwise.  I felt nauseous from eating this Taco Bell product, which is painful for me to admit.  I’ve stood by Taco Bell for years, espousing it as the greatest late-night fast food option in existence.  Sober or intoxicated, veg or non-veggie, I defended it.

Who cares if the meat has the texture of belly button lint?  Who cares if the special sauce tastes like two week old mayo left out in the sun?  Taco Bell rarely has anything on the menu too insane to try, and…well…

I BLAME BACON!!!

The internet, newsprint and food television have created a perfect storm of bacon.  If you’re a fast food chain without bacon, GOD HELP YOU.  Bloggers won’t blog about you, twitterer’s won’t tweet shit, and people still reading the newspaper will bemoan the crumbling state of newsprint rather than try your bacon-less drivel.

I demand we take back bacon by not mentioning it every five seconds when talking about food.  In ten years time, bacon should then be under-appreciated, and we can all join together and start Bacon Fad 2.0 in 2019.

But for now, thanks to massive over-exposure and Taco Bell, me and bacon won’t be speaking for a while.  If you run into bacon on the street or something, just tell him I meant to call last night.  And yeah, I’ll totally call bacon back tomorrow, it’s just that I lost my phone.  And my facebook password.  Someone poke bacon for me.

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Many of you are probably thinking, “whaaaaaaaaa? how can you not like bacon on a burger?” It’s seems like one of the most obvious and easy uses for bacon.  Most people believe that if you add some crispy, greasy bacon to pretty much any burger, good, bad or mediocre, it WILL be better. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

How many times have you ordered a mediocre fast food burger that came with soft, chewy or generally gross, low quality bacon? In those cases, you aren’t adding anything but cost, calories and consternation to your burger order.  But the main reason that your opinion is WRONG?  It completely disregards a new food fad that has been trending mainstream like crazy in the past five years: the rise of the easily accessible & affordable premium burger.

California residents, with access to In-n-Out Burger, have long known the joys of being able to get affordable, fresh and delicious burgers. But  in other parts of the country, many consumers are just now becoming able to find premium, fresh (not frozen) hamburgers at affordable prices. Whether it’s the expanding-faster-than-you-can-blink Five Guys, or city specific chains like Shake Shack in NYC or Ray’s Hell Burger or Z Burger in DC,  there are a LOT of really, really good burgers available to the public in the $4 – $10 price range.  Not to mention the growing number of bars and restaurants who are now putting a bigger menu focus on burgers.  Many of these are damn tasty burgers, with fresh, well seasoned and perfectly moist and greasy hand-formed patties.

You want to taste bacon? Eat a BLT or order it with your eggs at breakfast. You want to taste a burger? Then really TASTE a burger. Don’t mask it with the flavor of bacon. Yeah, it’s delicious, we know.  But what are you really in the mood for? Bacon? Or a juicy burger? If it’s the latter, your addition of bacon to the mix is preventing you from enjoying the full wonderfulness of a well-made, perfectly cooked burger.  There’s a reason In-n-Out doesn’t serve bacon on their burgers: they don’t NEED bacon. They are f-ing awesome on their own, and if you want to take issue with the menu options of perhaps the best burger chain in the country, then be perpared for a horde of burger loving Mormons to hunt you down.

There are so many good burgers these days, and if you haven’t enjoyed the taste of one of them without the addition of bacon, you aren’t doing justice to the tremendous amount of time and work burger joint owners have put into raising the quality of this classic American dining staple. Your decision to add bacon is an insult to the high level of quality and deliciousness of these burgers.

So give it some thought So Good readers. Are you always ordering bacon on your burger?  STOP. Dial it back a bit. Recognize that sometimes, you don’t need bacon.  Sometimes, you need to appreciate good burgers for exactly what they are: good burgers.   There ain’t nothing wrong with that.

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And you thought you had a rough childhood.  How about having to pose in custom-made three-piece bacon-esque tuxedos? Where else but on Awkward Family Photos would you find this shot… 

And how many times will the shark be jumped?  Stay tuned.

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As further evidence of bacon permeating society, I present Bakon Vodka c/o our friends at Jezebel.  So Good previously noted a recipe for making this cringe-inducing concoction at home (perhaps even in your bathtub), but this idea has now officially gone commercial.  And they even have a Twitter feed – how cute.

When, oh when, will the shark be jumped?  What’s your opinion, readers?

H/t to Life Files for the pic.

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A while back, a friend of So Good blog, Bacon Freak, sent a care package to the SG World HQ with a number of their baconcentric products.  The one I found most interesting was their Maple Bacon Pancake Mix.
Last weekend, I decided to try it out.  One reason I chose this item was my love for flapjacks, almost any time of day.  Plain buttermilk are my favorite, but sometimes I like to change things up.  This was certainly one of those times.

Now we all know about the bacon craze that is going on, so for people that are true bacon buffs, these pancakes are for you.  I first appreciated their potency when I first opened the bag of mix, and my nostrils were filled of the aroma of a smokehouse.  Powerful stuff.  This mix only required water, so making the batter was a snap.  I soon had it ready to go in my hot skillet. 

The batter had pieces of real bacon as well as what they call “maple chunks.” 

The perfectly cooked item:

Overall, these pancakes had a serious bacon flavor far beyond the actual bacon pieces in the mix.  This flavor really drowned out any maple sweetness provided by the maple pieces, which seemed to melt during cooking.  If you are hard core into bacon, this mix is recommended.  If not, proceed with caution. 

Also check out their bacon jerky selection – the Summer BLT being a fave.
H/t to Wikimedia for the HQ shot.

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Update: Voting on this match-up is now closed. By a vote of 465 (57%) – 351, (43%), Bacon has defeated Steak to earn the title of the greatest meat.

After watching 32 meats face-off for meat supremacy over the past 6 weeks, we are down to our final vote. Steak vs. Bacon. The winner will be crowned as the single greatest meat there is.

Voting begins today at noon and polls close on Friday at noon.

Here’s a little “Tale of the Tape” about each of the two contenders.

Total votes earned so far (raw #’s):

Steak: 975
Bacon: 1,103

Edge: Bacon

Average margin of victory (%):

Steak: 59%
Bacon: 48%

Edge: Steak

Total comments left on posts of match-ups:

Steak: 37
Bacon: 87

Edge: Bacon

Biggest margin of victory:

Steak: 76% (vs. Roast Beef, Rnd. 1)
Bacon: 80% (vs. Pork Chops, Rnd. 1)

Edge: Bacon

Smallest margin of victory:

Steak: 36% (vs. Crab in Final Four)
Bacon: 20% (vs. Chicken in Final Four)

Edge: Steak

Looks like we’re in for one hell of a final match-up. With voting open for 4 full days, there is plenty of time for either meat to make a run even after falling behind. Will a leader emerge right away? Or will these two titans of meat battle back and forth throughout the week? As always, use the comment section to argue for which meat you think should prevail.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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In a recent article in The Daily Telegraph, Elin Roberts, a science communications manager at the Centre for Life education centre in Newcastle, UK points out there is a very scientific explanation for why we love bacon so much. The secret to bacon’s popularity isn’t just in the taste, but in the flavors and smells that are released when bacon reaches a certain level of heat during the cooking process.

This chemical reaction is called the Maillard reaction, which occurs between amino acids in the bacon and the reducing sugars in the bacon fat. Wikipedia has a basic explanation of the effect:

“In the process, hundreds of different flavor compounds are created. These compounds in turn break down to form yet more new flavor compounds, and so on. Each type of food has a very distinctive set of flavor compounds that are formed during the Maillard reaction.”

The Maillard reaction and the high level of amino acids in bacon is also what makes bacon such a satisfying food when you have a hangover.

So let this be a science lesson for all you bacon lovers out there. Your love of bacon has nothing to do with your own independently developed taste preferences or your opinion of the meat. In fact, you’re nothing more than a slave to chemistry. And who was good at chemistry in high school? Nerds. Nerds were good at chemistry. Connect the dots people, connect the dots. Bacon lovers = chemistry nerds.

A note for So Good readers – I’ve started contributing blog posts to a new site, Food2.  This post has been cross posted there. It’s a great new blog, go check it out!

Picture via One Whole Clove.

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the BA-K-47, a 1:1 scale AK-47 made out of bacon. It took a total of eight hours to create, a lot of bacon, and a blowtorch… oh yeah, and our good friend beer helped too.

Damn. That’s quite the weekend bacon project. Check it out below, and head over to their site to see additional pictures.

H/T to Slanch Report.

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Update: Voting on this match-up is now closed.  Bacon defeats Chicken 60% – 40% and advances to the final!

Final Four voting has begun! From Noon today until noon on Thursday we will be voting to determine who will advance to the championship match-up, Chicken or Bacon.  The winner of this match-up will face the winner of the Steak vs. Crab match-up.

As usual, please utilize the comment section to vigorously argue for which meat you think should advance.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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H/T Bacon Unwrapped.

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Update: Voting on this match-up is now closed. Bacon defeats Ribs 69% – 31%.

Wow. We had quite the down to the wire vote on that last match-up!  After blowouts by Steak and Chicken, Lobster and Crab fought it out to the bitter end with Crab upsetting Lobster by only 5 votes!

Today’s battle will determine the winner of the Pork Region. #1 seed Bacon takes on Cinderella story #7 Ribs.

Voting will be open until noon tomorrow. Remember, this is the LAST match-up of the Elite 8. Don’t forget this vote is yours and yours alone – you can vote on any criteria, taste, prestige, cost, availability, versatility, whatever you want.  Please use the comment section to argue for the meat you think should prevail and why. Get creative, get nasty, get personal!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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Click the bracket below to see a larger version.

Here is a preview of next week’s match-ups:

Monday: Red Meat Region #1 Steak vs. #2 Lamb

#1 Steak wasted no time establishing its dominance, crushing Roast Beef with 88% of the vote in the first round and defeating Buffalo with 86% of the vote in the second round.  Steak is clearly a force to be reckoned with in this tournament, but so far has not faced any serious competition. Has it been overhyped after facing two relatively weak early opponents or will it steamroll any future competitors as well?

#2 Lamb faced a much more difficult path to the Elite 8.  In the first round, Corned Beef gave it little trouble, with Lamb taking a convincing 67% of the vote. However, in the second round, Lamb faced an exhausting battle with #3 seed Ground Beef, tying 50%-50% after 24 hours of voting. In a 24 hour long overtime vote, Lamb finally prevailed over Ground Beef by a mere TWO votes. Has Lamb been battle tested with their victory over Ground Beef? Or will it be too fatigued to put up a fight against Steak?

Tuesday: Poultry Region #1 Chicken vs. #2 Turkey

#1 Chicken has had perhaps the easiest waltz into the Elite 8 of any of the remaining competitors.  After crushing Pheasant with 89% of the vote, Chicken easily dispensed of Rabbit with an even more impressive 91% of the vote.  Chicken is popular and omnipresent, but when people think Chicken, will they envision dry, tasteless chicken, yummy fried chicken or spicy buffalo wings?  Does it have the taste chops or foodie credentials to take on a more formative competitor?

#2 Turkey breezed past Quail in the first round with 83% of the vote.   However, Turkey ran into ferocious opposition from impassioned supporters of #3 Duck in the second round, ultimately prevailing with 57% of the vote.  Will Duck supporters fall in line behind the bird that vanquished their favorite? Will nostalgia for Thanksgiving and love of sandwiches power Turkey to victory? Will complaints that it is “dry” and “boring” be heard? Will this battle-tested meat be able to knock off the Poultry region’s #1 seed?

Wednesday: Seafood Region #1 Lobster vs. #6 Crab

#1 Lobster cruised past #8 Clams based on taste, prestige and its reputation as a delicacy, winning with 84% of the vote.  However, Lobster ran into a strong opponent in the second round, with #5 Shrimp capturing a healthy 42% of the vote. Lobster remains a strong competitor that can succeed on taste and prestige alone. But will concerns about its cost and availability ultimately sink this shellfish?

#6 Crab faced a tough first round match-up but proved they were underrated by the selection committee after defeating Salmon with 58% of the vote.  In the second round, Crab continued to assert its dominance by defeating foodie and Top Chef favorite Scallops with 61% of the vote.  It comes down to this: Crab feels slighted by their #6 seed and is out to prove its critics wrong.  Will concerns about how difficult it is to eat Crab cause it any problems? Will the taste and eating ritual associated with Crab power it to victory? Can this shellfish normally associated with Alaska and the Mid-Atlantic defeat Northeast darling Lobster?

Thursday: Pork Region #1 Bacon vs. #7 Ribs

#1 Bacon, long the favorite of internet foodies, wasted no time in laughing off its early competitors, taking 91% of the vote against Pork Chops, the highest vote percentage of any #1 seed in the first round.  BBQ lovers thought Pulled Pork might give Bacon a fight in the second round, but Bacon tossed aside its competition, winning a stunning 78% of the vote.

#7 Ribs has been the Cinderella story of the entire Meat Madness tournament.  Despite pleas from Sausage supporters that Ribs lacked versatility and consistency, BBQ lovers rushed to the defense of their favorite meat.   Sausage lovers, believing their meat had the chops to go all the way to the Final Four, were stunned when Ribs defeated Sausage with 58% of the vote in the first round.   Proving their victory was no fluke, Ribs expanded their margin in the second round, taking out foodie favorite Prosciutto with 69% of the vote.  Bacon represents probably the strongest foe possible, but throughout the competition Ribs supporters have been out in full force. Can their Cinderella run continue?

Don’t forget to head back to So Good on Monday for voting on the Elite 8 match-ups all week.

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