When you’re an ‘Avatar’ sequel, $1.486B isn’t enough money. PLUS: The eye of Bezos protects ‘Rings of Power,’ ‘Punisher’ and ‘The Invite’ get trailers, and ‘Dune: Part Three’ is already selling out screenings.
Black Forest revamped its lineup, introducing Organic Gummy Bears and Organic Gummy Forest Friends with ‘no artificial colors and flavors from real sources.’
This is a very special edition of Snackology. Not only is it the 200th edition of this newsletter, it’s the first time that Snackology is bringing you a meat review.
Snackology has covered fast food menu items that were meat-based in the past. Chicken nuggets, chicken tenders and chicken sandwiches. Burgers, steak Crunchwraps and beef burritos. I’ve even compared fish sandwiches.
But for the 200th edition of Snackology, I’m talking about the American tradition of ripping open a package of bacon and firing up some hot dogs. I’m talking about Oscar Mayer Maple Bourbon Sliced Bacon. And I’m talking about Oscar Mayer Cheesy Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dogs and Oscar Mayer Beef & Pork Franks.
The maple Bourbon Sliced Bacon was Oscar Mayer’s major release this week. The company teamed up with Evan Williams Bourbon for the company’s first “bacon innovation” in five years. (Hormel Black Label Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bacon was the invention of a competitor.) The partnership promises to deliver “a sweet, smoky maple-kissed savory bite with a smooth bourbon-inspired finish.”
“While we have been crafting delicious bacon for 90 years, Maple Bourbon Bacon is an exciting new chapter for our bacon portfolio and shows consumers that we are thinking about bacon differently,” Anna James, brand manager for Oscar Mayer, said in the announcement of the new bacon. “With the bacon category growing and accounting for one-third of our business, we are leaning into bold, trend-driven flavors our fans want, bringing new energy to a beloved breakfast classic.”
Between the bacon and two new varieties of hot dogs, it’s time to jump into this edition of Meatology. (What’s that? The Snackology corporate legal team tells me that we can’t use that?)
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What they cost
I haven’t seen official prices for these products, but Instacart lists Oscar Mayer Maple Bourbon Sliced Bacon at $10.69. I’m still looking for pricing on the two varieties of hot dogs.
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Who doesn’t love bacon? It might be hard to believe since you’re reading a newsletter that I write about fast food and candy, but I probably loved bacon a bit too much for a few years and had to remind myself that it’s a sometimes food as I approached 40.
But I wasn’t going to say no to Oscar Mayer Maple Bourbon Sliced Bacon.
Opening the package instantly released the aroma of maple syrup. I’m not a bourbon guy, but I do know what maple syrup smells and tastes like.
If I were to rank my three preferred ways of cooking bacon, it’d go frying pan, sheet pan in the oven and then the microwave. I like the controlled chaos of cooking bacon in a pan, dodging flecks of hot grease as I maneuver slices around each other. (Have you ever seen how Matty Matheson cooks an entire package of bacon at once? Talk about controlled chaos.)
I cooked up the Maple Bourbon Sliced Bacon to just the right balance of crispiness with a few chewy edges left as balance. As expected, this bacon was delicious. While our entire downstairs now smells like maple bacon, the flavor of the bacon itself was much more subtle.
There’s a good chance that I’m going to pair Oscar Mayer’s latest bacon innovation with a fried egg and a slice of American cheese this weekend.
As an American, my love of bacon is matched by my love of a hot dog. (As a Rochester, New York, native, that love extends to a white hot too. I even have a baseball hat with a cartoon white hot on it.) There’s no amount of talk about what goes into a hot dog or what the casing is made out of that will scare me away.
We haven’t fired up our grill yet this year, so the stove would have the honor of cooking both varieties of Oscar Mayer hot dogs. You ever read the instructions on the back of a package of hot dogs? There’s water involved, there’s a bit of steaming, maybe even some boiling. My method is to just keep turning them in the frying pan until the casing starts to pop. (And, no, I absolutely wasn’t going to straight up boil or even microwave these hot dogs.)
I decided to taste test the Oscar Mayer Cheesy Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dogs first. This one was clearly the biggest innovation between the two new hot dogs. Oscar Mayer has been doing cheese-stuffed hot dogs for a bit now, but this variety promised a “smoky take” on that combo.
Based on the package for the Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dogs, I expected to see cheddar cheese streaming out of the hot dog after I cut it in half. Maybe it’s a combination of this specific hot dog and where I sliced it open, but the cheese filling was more of a suggestion than a filling.
It’s still very hard to stop eating a hot dog, though, and my dedication to the craft eventually led me to a cheesier part of the dog.
I was unaware that Oscar Mayer didn’t already make a hot dog that united the power of beef and pork, but here we are. (I also gotta admit that I don’t know the legal differences between hot dogs and franks. I assume there’s an Oscar Mayer lawyer whose only job is maintaining the paperwork on this issue.) As I mentioned earlier, the actual makeup of a hot dog doesn’t really matter to me, but I’m happy to report that beef and pork remain a delicious hot dog combo.
The Beef & Pork Frank had an excellent snap to it when I took a bite. It was flavorful enough to easily stand on its own ... but I had additional plans for this hot dog.
While grocery shopping on Thursday, I spent way too much time researching different mustards while in the condiment aisle. In the end, the cartoon hot dog on Gleezy Carolina Dog Sauce captured my attention and my heart, and into our cart it went.
As an originalist when it comes to hot dog toppings, I’m a firm believer that you only need to put yellow mustard on a hot dog. (I’m sure our Founding Fathers would agree with me. It’s not like they ever got anything wrong.) Gleezy Carolina Dog Sauce — “a tangy vinegar mustard-based sauce with a shred of heat” — was the perfect complement to an Oscar Mayer Beef & Pork Frank.
Oscar Mayer Maple Bourbon Sliced Bacon, Oscar Mayer Cheesy Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dogs and Oscar Mayer Beef and Pork Franks were provided to Snackology for this independent review.
Snackology is a publication of The Omnicosm.
Issue No. 200
Snackology is written and produced by Bill Kuchman. Copyediting by Tim Kuchman.
The Omnicosm founder. Snackology, Popculturology and The Cold Open writer. A Rochester, N.Y., native now living in the Washington, D.C., area. Won’t pass up a Genny Cream Ale.
Black Forest revamped its lineup, introducing Organic Gummy Bears and Organic Gummy Forest Friends with ‘no artificial colors and flavors from real sources.’
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