Where there's smoke, there's flavor

Bacon is never far from Peter McCarthy's reach. A thick slab of it is sometimes smoking in the alley behind his Somerville restaurant, Evoo. But t he chef and owner is more likely to buy smoked meat for the apple-bacon salsa that accompanies his signature cornmeal fried oysters and for his creamy potato bacon soup.

McCarthy's love of bacon runs deep. Etched in his mind is waking up as a boy to the smell of bacon cooking. To this day, the aroma reminds him of Sunday mornings. Now, in the weeks before the soil warms and spring blooms in New England, McCarthy welcomes bacon's rich smokiness as a means of adding nuances to wintry dishes.

From the chef's standpoint, bacon is a perfect flavoring agent. "It's smoky, salty, sweet, fatty, and meaty all at the same time," says McCarthy. "And it adds these same elements to other foods."

Strips of bacon can also be used to baste other meats while they cook. At the Hopkinton cafe, Sauce on Main, Shawn O'Leary wraps pork tenderloin with bacon. "It's not just two porks mixed together," says the chef and owner. "One is a tender, lean cut; the other a cured, smoked meat." He explains that the bacon, which tightens up around the narrow tenderloin as the fat renders, keeps the leaner pork moist as it cooks. "It's a good marriage."

Not all bacon is created equal, however. Just as artisans have crafted extraordinary cheeses and chocolates, small, quality-obsessed smokehouses are making bacon distinctly different from ordinary brands. A few bites will make bacon fans leave their old loyalties behind.

To make bacon, pork bellies are typically injected with brine, then smoked, chilled, sliced, and packaged. The large commercial processors, eager to satisfy America's substantial appetite for the breakfast meat, generally accomplish this in a day or two. Slow the process down to a week or longer, and something else happens. The pork absorbs the flavors of the brine (which usually includes salt, spices, and sometimes maple syrup and/or brown sugar) and the thick smoke from aromatic fruit woods permeates the meat. The product develops a real smoky flavor that isn't diminished or lost when you cook it.

Bacon lovers McCarthy and O'Leary happen to use the same brand, which comes from North Country Smokehouse in Claremont, N. H. Founder and owner Mike Satzow describes his bacon as "deep, dark, and smoky-rich." Attention to every detail throughout the bacon-making process, he says, is what produces an intensely flavored meat redolent of sweet smoke.

Satzow buys smaller, leaner bellies trucked in from a Canadian farm. The pork gets four days "in a signature brine," as he calls it, that includes sodium nitrite, a traditional yet somewhat controversial curing agent used to prevent botulism. (The company also makes uncured bacon.) The meat is then hung on racks and moved into German-made smokehouses with powerful fans that bathe the meat in aromatic smoke from applewood chips for as long as 10 hours.

Commercial producers might spray the pork bellies with liquid smoke or rush them through industrial smokers, says the New Hampshire entrepreneur, which is why most supermarket brands don't actually taste smoky. Chefs who use a lot of bacon are probably also cooking more with bacon fat, says Satzow.

For the rest of us, bacon is one of those foods we hate to love. But love it we do -- especially in one of the world's best sandwiches: a BLT. At Flour Bakery + Cafe, located in the South End and Fort Point Channel, chefs cook more than 150 pounds of bacon each week, just for BLTs, says pastry chef and owner Joanne Chang. The bacon, which also comes from North Country, is applewood smoked.

High quality, hardwood-smoked bacon is difficult to resist, for everyone except those whose diets don't allow pork -- and vegetarians. And many people know a vegetarian who has caved now and again. Evoo's McCarthy says more than a few have admitted to sneaking a piece of bacon occasionally.

It probably has something to do with the smell of it cooking on Sunday mornings past.

North Country Smokehouse bacon is available at the Butcher Boy Marketplace, 1077 Osgood St., North Andover, 978-688-1511; John Dewar & Co., 753 Beacon St., Newton, 617-964-3577 and 277 Linden St, Wellesley, 781-235-8322; Tilly & Salvy's Bacon Street Farm, 100 Bacon St., Natick, 508-653-4851, or go to ncsmokehouse.com