Infinite Bacon! / constructing the Mobius Bacon strip

To christen the birth of my new blog, it was only appropriate to construct the hallmark Mobius Bacon strip.  A Mobius strip is a surface with only one side, that is, if you were to trace your finger along one side of the loop, you would end up on the “other side” as you returned to the starting point.   Continuing to trace the loop would lead you back to the original starting point.   I’m sure this has some kind of actual food-based application somewhere.  Maybe if you fried bacon in space, the grease would never drip off and instead flow along the bacon forever, or something. Cool.

Transglutaminase-catalyzed reaction, drawn with the help of this site

There were a couple possible ways to build this, but I thought it would be a good time to use a new “toy” I’ve been meaning to try: transglutaminase (aka meat glue).  TG is an enzyme that catalyzes a bond formation between the amino acids lysine and glutamine (see figure above, c/o my favorite biochem textbook).  These amino acids are commonly present in meats (meat consists of muscle, which consists of protein, which consists of a wide range of amino acids).

Left: Two thick strips of bacon. Right: two strips of bacon glued together using transglutaminase

I assembled the Mobius bacon strip by gluing two strips together to form a loop with a half-turn in one strip.  About ¼ tsp of TG was dusted onto a square inch of bacon at each overlapping region and allowed to sit in the refrigerator for 2 hours (could be about 1 hour at room temperature, but this may be less sanitary).  The next problem was finding a way to stably cook the bacon while retaining a desirable 3D shape.  As with many bacon constructions (baconstructions?) such as the bacon weave, the bacon basket, the bacon vest (may have made up the last one), I opted to use the oven.

Above: Mobius bacon strip wrapped around two teacups and supported with chopsticks. A failure.

Bacon cooking approach #1 did not meet with much success.  After 20 minutes at 375^oF, I opened the door to discover that my Mobius bacon strip had literally fallen apart at the seams.  The problem was that bacon shrinks as it cooks, so tightly wrapping around teacups applied too much force to the weak TG bonds (bacon is about half fat, which can’t contribute much to the gluing process).  I needed a way to keep the bacon strip around a mold that was somewhat malleable, and a cooking technique that was a bit faster.  20 minutes is a long time to wait for bacon.

It then occurred to me that the bacon’s thin and uniform composition would make it ideal for microwaving, and paper towels would serve a double purpose of cleaning up grease and shrinking as the bacon strips shrank.

Left: Two thick bacon strips glued together using TG, wrapped in towels with balls of paper towel used to hold shape. Right: SUCCESS!

As a bonus, this little project sold me on the idea that microwaving is the best way to cook bacon.  Due to some potential variation between home microwaves, you may need to make a quick bacon standard curve (try microwaving one strip for 30 seconds, another for 45, and another for 60 seconds) to determine what times correspond to what level of crispiness.  If you want to keep your bacon grease, simply microwave your strips in a setup that can collect drippings (in a colander over a bowl, or on a row of chopsticks).  If you want your bacon to cook in (and possibly soak up? I’m not positive on this) its own grease, simply microwave your strips in a microwave-safe bowl.  To save time on any kind of cleanup effort, wrap your strips up in paper towels like I did.  Booom. You’re welcome.

Left: Uncooked thick bacon strip.  Right: from top to bottom, thick bacon strips of increasing crispiness cooked for 30, 45, and 60 seconds in my home microwave.