Glacier Valley Rotary\u2019s 2017 BaconFest sold out again this year. Not one of the 350 attendees had a heart attack on site.<\/p>\n
The event pits Juneau food vendors against one another in a bacon cook-off. This year there were 18 entries from 12 different vendors.<\/p>\n
Maple syrup, jalapeno, cheddar \u2014 these are the stalwarts of bacon pairings, and they were on full display in quiches, sticky buns, donuts and wraps at the event.<\/p>\n
But vendors didn\u2019t limit themselves to the ordinary. Featured items ran the gamut from the traditional to the outlandish. Juneau\u2019s culinary explorers incorporated Brussel sprouts, gold leaf, coconut, milkshake and Rice Krispie treats in their bacon-infused creations, with some earning great acclaim for the adventurous dishes.<\/p>\n
All awards, with the exception of the Professional\u2019s Choice Award, were selected by attendees at the Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall.<\/p>\n
Savory and sweet <\/strong><\/p>\n The first-place winner in the savory category, Coconut Thai Cuisine\u2019s \u201cCaramelized Pork Belly Thai Soup,\u201d is a working-class Thai dish influenced by Chinese peasants. It\u2019s not currently on the menu at Coconut Thai, but it could make an appearance there as a limited-edition item, the downtown restaurant\u2019s Sitthida Sukkamon said.<\/p>\n \u201cThailand has a lot of influences from other countries like China, Vietnam, Laos and India,\u201d Sukkamon explained by phone on Monday. \u201c\u2026 Chinese immigrants who were poor, they used old vegetables to make a soup and put pork belly in because it\u2019s a cheap kind of meat.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many of the world\u2019s best foods, it\u2019s a dish created out of necessity. Chinese immigrants to Thailand would make the soup from nearly-expired produce, saving it from the trash can. Often working hard jobs as laborers, Thailand\u2019s Chinese immigrants needed high-energy foods, which is where the pork belly comes in.<\/p>\n \u201cPork belly is poor people\u2019s food, because richer people often buy leaner cuts. They use it to make an oil out of it. If they have access to vegetables, they just make it as a soup. Labor people in Thailand need something for energy. Pork belly gives you fat for energy,\u201d Sukkamon said.<\/p>\n Sandpiper Cafe won the sweet category with their \u201cBacon Maple Milkshake with Candied Bacon and Smoke Salt.\u201d It\u2019s a milkshake you eat with a piece of candied bacon as a spoon.<\/p>\n The cafe just started offering milkshakes and pegged BaconFest as a good venue to promote their new offering. Vendors also voted for it as the co-winner of the Professional\u2019s Choice Award.<\/span><\/p>\n The recipe is made with half and half, Hagen Das ice cream and real maple syrup with a piece of candied bacon as a spoon.<\/p>\n Boliver used the alder-smoked salt, sourced from a Sitka company, in two stages: once before cooking the bacon and again previous serving to \u201copen up the aromatics of the dish.\u201d<\/p>\n The professional\u2019s choice <\/strong><\/p>\n Setting the high bar for ambition was V\u2019s Cellar Door with their \u201cHand-made Bacon Infused Chip topped with Fusion Bacon Slaw.\u201d<\/p>\n V\u2019s nacho-like creation took home second place in the savory category and tied Breeze-In for the Professional\u2019s Choice Award, voted on by fellow vendors.<\/p>\n Owner and operator Venietia \u201cV\u201d Santana said her nachos were about five months in the making. With no recipe to follow, she and her crew first had to figure out a way to incorporate bacon into their tortilla chip. This was a process of experimentation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really knew what we wanted to do, but it took a lot of practice. The bacon fat was causing the tortilla to break, so we figured out from there that you have to dry them before baking,\u201d Santana said.<\/p>\n Next, they tinkered with different additions to the chip, eventually opting for their signature cabbage slaw and a trio kimchi, avocado and fusion aiolis. Instead of topping the nacho off with their usual sesame seed garnish, the Mexican-Korean fusion joint opted for crumbled bacon.<\/p>\n Breeze-In took home runner-up honors in the sweet category for their \u201cBacon Maple Bar Infused with Amaretto,\u201d a treat so rich many BaconFest attendees chose to save this one for last. <\/p>\n The mad scientists at Breeze In filled a bacon-topped maple donut with peanut butter and shot it through with amaretto simple syrup. The amaretto shot came in a plastic eye dropper sticking out of the donut, giving the whole dish a clinical feel.<\/p>\n Side effects of Breeze In\u2019s winner include sleepiness, weight gain and euphoria. Moorehead might soon make a celebratory batch for sale in-store.<\/p>\n The treat is a riff on Breeze In\u2019s popular maple bacon bars. The final product didn\u2019t resemble anything on the convenience store\u2019s shelves, but \u201creinterpreted all the flavor profiles\u201d from their popular donut, Breeze-In\u2019s Dave Moorehead said.<\/p>\n The convenience store takes great pride in their pork. Moorehead said that, to his knowledge, they are the only local food purveyor to cut, cure, slice and cook their own bacon in-house.<\/p>\n \u201cWe go through about 200 to 500 pounds of bacon a week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 or kevin.gullufsen@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the winner of the Professional’s Choice Award. V’s Cellar Door and the Sandpiper Cafe tied for the Professional’s Choice Award at BaconFest, not V’s Cellar Door and Breeze In. Also, an earlier version quoted Boliver as saying “maple milk” which, to our knowledge, doesn’t exist. Boliver was actually referring to two different ingredients. What he really said was, “maple, milk.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Glacier Valley Rotary\u2019s 2017 BaconFest sold out again this year. Not one of the 350 attendees had a heart attack on site. The event pits Juneau food vendors against one another in a bacon cook-off. This year there were 18 entries from 12 different vendors. Maple syrup, jalapeno, cheddar \u2014 these are the stalwarts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":1972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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