I was strolling through the archives recently when I found this post, which I had surprisingly forgotten about. Shocking, I know. Who could forget about so much bacon? Well, since I had, I assume all of you have as well. So I am busting this back out, mostly because Tom ate a lot of delicious bacon fat in the name of testing vintage recipes for this one, and so deserves lots of credit. Also because there is an adorable picture of Alex when she was tiny.

Hey there! Are you ready for some BACON?

Meet the Bacon Big Boy! The minute I saw this recipe in a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook called Cooking for Two from 1968, I knew I had to make these. This is one of those recipes that has been hanging out on my “too make” list for years, and finally I had to put my foot down and make them before I started losing sleep over it. This recipe is exactly what it looks like: There are hot dogs on a roll and the whole thing is wrapped in bacon.

AuthorRetroRuth

From Cooking for Two, Better Homes and Gardens, 1968

[cooked-sharing]

Sometimes, when you are reading a recipe, things don’t really hit you until you actually start making it, actually measuring the ingredients and chopping and stirring. Then things suddenly occur to you. Lightbulbs go off over your head and that little voice inside you says, “Wait just a flipping minute here.”

My light bulb went off on about the fourth strip of raw bacon, when I realized I wasn’t just wrapping a sandwich, I was actually wrapping a little bit of insanity.

All snuggly. In raw bacon.

I mean, really. Raw bacon. On bread.

I have to tell you, I put these on a rack on top of a sheet pan, but hardly any grease dripped through the rack and ended up on the pan. Hardly any. From 8 pieces of bacon.

I’ll give you one guess where all that grease went.

You got it, buddy.

So, even with the knowledge that I was literally holding a heart-attack in my hands, I still pushed onward. With a flourish, I presented it to the family.

There was some disbelief.

“That’s…a lot of bacon.”

“I know, right? Even the baby is shocked.”

“This is the greasiest thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“I was going to make a joke about how watching you eat it was going to give me a heart attack, but for some reason it just isn’t funny anymore.”

“That’s because this just got real. This is the kind of sandwich you eat when you are ashamed of how you live your life.”

The Verdict: Greasy. And not in a good way.

From The Tasting Notes:

Inexplicably, eating this sandwich made us both sad. It wasn’t that it was a bad sandwich. In fact, it was deliriously greasy, with all of the bacon fat sucked straight into the bread and running in little streams down your wrists while you ate it. It was just a bit…strange. It made you feel guilty while you were eating it, instead of after the fact. However, there was part of one of the sandwiches where just one strip of bacon was wrapped loosely around the bread and all the rest of the bacon had fallen away during cooking. This ended up tasting pretty darn good. So, as with everything, moderation is the key. Make the sandwich, but only wrap one strip of bacon around the whole thing. No one needs to eat two hot dogs and 4 strips of bacon AND all the bacon grease in one sandwich. It is just too rich and too much.