Snack Review: J&D’s Bacon Salt

Bacon Salt. Their motto is “everything should taste like bacon.” Who could argue with that?

And, now that you mention it, I thought, not enough snacks taste like bacon. I proposed to solve this problem by ordering all three flavors of Bacon Salt and applying them to the snack which most needs to have salt added to it: freshly popped popcorn. After all, if butter is good on popcorn, the odds seem pretty good that it would be even better with the flavor of one of the few fats that is more delicious than butter: the fine, fine fat of our friend the pig.

When my Bacon Salt arrived, I opened the package and then the first jar with great anticipation. I took a deep whiff. Because what’s better than the fragrance of bacon?

Well, not the smell of Bacon Salt. The bad news was that the smell of Bacon Salt was distinctly familiar, but not because it smelled like bacon. It’s because it smells like Pup-peroni.

Those of you who don’t have dogs may not know that Pup-peroni is a dog treat which comes in long, flexible sticks, sort of like Slim Jims. I have never tasted Pup-peroni, but after trying Bacon Salt, that won’t be necessary. I have a pretty good idea of what it probably tastes like.

Because, I did bravely soldier on and try the Bacon Salt as originally intended. The Original flavor was bad enough. The Hickory was worse, with the chemical taste of artificial bacon flavor glorified with the further chemical taste of artificial smoke flavor. Peppered was the least bad – pepper is at least a real flavor and in this one the artificial bacon flavor seems to be dialed down a bit.

In further experimentation, I noted that one of the main ingredients of Bacon Salt is paprika. I tried just paprika and salt on popcorn, to see if that happened to be where the problem lay. It wasn’t. Paprika on popcorn isn’t something that I expect to see as the next great culinary trend, but it’s not bad, and it’s a lot better than popcorn with Bacon Salt.

In a desperate attempt to salvage the situation, I tried a more conventional, non-snack application, on scrambled eggs. This was, if anything, more horrible, maybe because one has a better idea of the taste “bacon and eggs” than of “bacon-flavored popcorn,” so it’s a lot clearer how far it misses the mark.

I also tried it on a peanut butter sandwich. If you’ve never had a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, you should try it. It’s quite glorious. Of the peanut butter and bacon salt sandwich – and I did take the precaution of using unsalted PB – the less said, the better.

In sum: Maybe everything should taste like bacon. But, tragically, nothing should taste like Bacon Salt.

• Bacon Salt Website

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