We may have finally found something that can't be made better with bacon. more ›

We braved the ravenous hordes on Saturday to bring you a recap. more ›

Oscar Mayer is debuting a new thick-cut bacon, and giving away a huge amount of it today, tomorrow and Friday all over Chicago. more ›

The fatty desert miracle (or curse) is being served in Nashville - when will it come to Chicago? more ›

Tickets for the very popular event will sell out immediately - be ready to jump on them. more ›

This model of Soldier Field was built out of more than 30 pounds of meat. more ›

French peas are easy, quick, and a great side for holiday hams, turkeys, and chickens. If you think you don't like peas, think again. more ›

Bacon Takedown returns to Lincoln Hall for a second go-round of overindulgence. more ›

694 Wine and Spirits impressed us. It's a simple statement, but as cocktail nerds, any bar that has this much of a commitment to serving craft spirits gets high marks in our book. They also serve exclusive Salumi Cured Meats from Seattle and Benton's Country Bacon bacon, both available in Chicago only at 694. Of course they have a good wine list, but we prefer whiskey with our pork. Plus, any menu that quotes Steve Martin from the Muppet Movie ("Sparkling Muscatel: One of the finest wines of Idaho") has got to be good. Formerly Juice Wine Co., 694 Wine and Spirits has rebranded, redecorated and revamped their food and drink selection. more ›

Green bean season is quickly approaching - peak months are May through October. Here's a quick and simple recipe for those beautiful greenies we know you'll be picking up at markets over the spring and summer. more ›

Like beer? Like trying new beers? Like learning about the history of beer? Consider signing up for CitySwarm's Chicago Beer Experience Tour on April 16th. For $47 ($41 if you buy before tomorrow night) you get a three-hour walking tour of north-side Chicago bars. During the tour, you will learn about beer history and taste 16 different beers. The tour starts at Vaughan's Pub with a history lesson and moves on to Paddy Long's for a combination beer tasting and bacon tasting. After, the tour heads to Bodega Ramos and ends at Delilah's. Plus, you can feel good about all the calories from the beer and bacon - you're walking so much! Alright, enough of our attempts to justify boozing - just go. There are only 20 tickets, so if you're interested, buy early. more ›

If we started this week's edition of What's for Dinner with the term "hot breasts," you might be a little worried about where we were going with it. Rest easy - these stuffed chicken breasts are packed with cheesy, blistering goodness and wrapped in bacon. Keep some beer nearby - thanks to the fiery Serrano peppers, you'll quickly reach for a cold one (or maybe two). Serrano peppers are quite a bit hotter than jalapenos and are perfect for someone looking for a little extra kick. Try making our recipe this week, created in Chicagoist's own test kitchens. more ›

This Friday at noon, tickets will go on sale for the greatest pork-themed day of the year. Baconfest Chicago, in its third "season" of operation, will showcase more than 50 chefs and restaurants, including favorites like Girl and the Goat, Naha, Moto and The Bristol. If you want to get your pork fix, buy tickets early. $65 gets you into the event, held on April 9th at the UIC forum. Proceeds will benefit the Greater Chicago food depository. Check after the jump for a complete list of exhibitors. more ›

Our loyal readers know how much we love flowcharts, especially when they have to do with food and booze. This chart from Foodzie will take you through all possible relationship scenarios to help you decide what to buy your man, starting with the length of the relationship and how good your last name sounds with his. Result? Bourbon, Bacon, Beer or nothing. What do you end up with? more ›

Canal Street's White Palace Grill gets a lot of publicity. Why? Because it’s open 24 hours a day? Because it has a rich history? Because it was on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives? Or perhaps because it bites its thumb at “foodie-food” like so many of late? From the White Palace Grill website, “If you need a break from "caramelized onions", "infused" sauces and names of food you can't pronounce then come over anytime 24 hours a day 365 days a year, we will be there to serve you comfort food.” Message received. more ›

Many of our readers probably caught Time Out Chicago's famous"100 Best Things We Ate This Year" list earlier this week - one of our favorite pieces of food coverage every year. December is the season for lists of one sort or another, and they will start coming fast and furious over the next few weeks. The Stew just released its list of dining trends for 2011 - in the model of Project Runway, they have announced what will be "in" and what will be "out." The list, whatever it's other qualities, is a hilarious read, though we are hoping that not all of it comes true. more ›

Bacon Flavored Bubbles? We're pretty much sold before you even finish the sentence. ThinkGeek, our favorite purveyors of strange bacon-flavored and/or caffeinated merchandise, brought this new gun to our attention. The same site that brought us dog beer and caffeinated soap now lets you shoot bacon flavored bubbles across the room! We've always loved bubble guns, but this takes it to a whole new level. more ›

Today, we mean the "culinary erotica" tag a little bit more literally. After all, it's Friday. After last week's bacon erotica, we bet you thought it couldn't get any better! Well, our appetite for bacon insanity is endless, though this may hit our limit. Are these unmentionables supposed to whet our appetites? Maybe they'd just make us jump out of bed craving breakfast. more ›

• Kim Severson of the New York Times profiles Roger Ebert, his new cookbook dedicated to rice cooker recipes and how he still uses the cooker to entertain, despite his inability to eat solid food. [NYT]
• Steve Dolinsky agrees with me, says the little hotties at Take Me Out in Pilsen are the best hot wings in town. [Dolinsky/Vocalo]
• Monica Eng looks at the growing arguments between localvores and conventional food advocates. [Tribune]

Normally, when a press release hits the inbox titled "Press Release Inferno!", It's laughed at, marked as spam and forgotten. But when the subject of said inferno is a bacon cookoff that promises to "consume the city in flames most awesome!", it begs to be read, if only in the hopes that the author of the press release is Andrew W.K. more ›

The terrorists don't "hate our freedoms." They hate what we do with our freedoms. Case in point: Kentucky Fried Chicken's Double Down sandwich. In a time when the debate rages about how fast food chains are contributing to America's obesity epidemic, launching a sandwich featuring bacon, cheese and Thousand Island-style secret sauce fit between two pieces of fried chicken breast — or grilled, if you're "health conscious" — is a brazen display of chutzpah, if not an outright "fuck you" to those same critics. more ›

Like a thief in the night, Baconfest Chicago is sneaking up on us. The Baconfest triumvirate has announced the list of 24 chefs cooking for the April 10 event at Stan Mansion in Logan Square. If these chefs, many of whom already pimped their wares at the Baconfest October pro cookoff at the Publican, bring their "A" game to Baconfest, this is gonna be a great way to tuck the bacon meme to rest for a looooonnng while. more ›

After about a year of cooking exactly the same Brussels Sprout recipe (which is delicious) we needed some variety. We wanted to keep the combination of bacon and sprouts, which is delectable, but add in something new - and preferably cut the cooking time down from the hour-plus that roasting them requires. more ›

Baconfest Chicago proper won't be for another six months, but if Saturday's VIP pro cookoff is any indication organizers Seth Zurer, Michael Griggs and Andre Pluess might want to have some ambulances at the ready. Or at least some Lipitor. We won't get into another debate about how played out the bacon meme is; haters will hate, lovers will love. But there was a sense of fun among the crowd Saturday. As vocal as the pro- and anti-bacon folks can be, the overall vibe was lifted from Alfred E. Neumann: "What? Me Worry?" Few took themselves seriously at the cookoff and levity reigned. So did excess. more ›

Time Out Chicago's David Tamarkin tries to write a humorous piece about our obsession with bacon — he thinks it's much ado about nothing — but comes across sounding like Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino." Thanks, David. You just gave us an excuse to run another shot of our recent pantry meat experiment. [TOC] more ›

A few weeks back at Chicago Gourmet, we heard Mindy Segal, the chef/owner of Hot Chocolate, expounding the virtues of cookies to the audience. She particularly plugged her bacon chocolate-chip cookies. It's possible that an audible gasp escaped our mouth at this revelation, and we determined to try them at once! more ›

Alright, we'll admit it - a lot of the time, we think collard greens are boiled to death. We know that some collard purists are going to get angry with us, arguing that the traditional way of cooking greens is the only way and that "pot licker" is the nectar of the gods. That's fine for them - we like our greens with a bit more bite. more ›

Try to resist a good dessert. You can't. Last weekend we had two very good ones at two separate locations a block apart. more ›

Isn't that pretty? After two weeks of curing, dry aging, smoking and slicing we now have 8 pounds of pancetta and bacon. The pancetta (pictured above), was ready for slicing and cooking. Here's something we discovered: For the bacon we had considered doing an applewood smoking of the bacon. Instead we went with hickory. For that, we set up our bullet smoker (a Weber Smoky mountain is ideal, we have a Brinkman bullet smoker) to reach a temperature of 120 degrees and smoked the bacon for 2 hours. You don't want the bacon to cook during the process, so try to keep the temperature constant. more ›

Although we have raised a significant amount of pledged monetary and in-kind sponsorship support, we have not been able to meet the financial goals that would make it possible to produce the event on the original time-line. more ›