If you’re in or near Montreal and crave the uhhhh, smokey goodness of bacon, you can get your fix guilt-free thanks to the kindness of the Lays Potato Chips Company, makers of Lays Smokey Bacon Potato Chips and the Kashruth Council of Canada (administrators of the COR hashgachah). Having never eaten bacon I don’t know how these chips compare, and frankly, I am not even going to try these. Kosher Smokey Bacon Chips – it just seems wrong.
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Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.
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Pork-belly futures are on the rise! As for the chips, “Betcha’ can’t eat just one…!”
Hey, if it’s kashrus, it’s kashrus! we can eat it!
Tofu is disgusting. It is basically edible plastic.
Soy sauce and miso only taste good because of the yeast and salt.
G-d made soybeans to fatten cattle with, for delicious steaks. People are not supposed to eat soybeans.
Ben-David
If you want to enjoy soy, you should eat it in its natural state as it was intended to be eaten: as tofu, miso, soy sauce, etc. East Asia has spent the last 3,000 years developing an entire cuisine based on the soybean, and properly enjoyed in its natural setting and as it is intended to be eaten, it is delicious.
The reason most soy products available in the US are so disgusting is because they take soy beans and try to make them taste like someting they aren’t. Tofu is not beef or chicken, and the results of trying to pound that square peg into the round hole are almost unifomly dreadful. It is all ersatz food.
It is difficult to find it here, but fresh, natural tofu properly prepared is absolutely delicious.
I agree with ck (as a former cheeseburger lover): the best kosher cheeseburger is made with soy meat and dairy cheese.
The soy cheese is disgusting – we stopped going to a local pizzeria because we could clearly taste the difference, even with spicy sauce.
Muffti is half-right about soy products. The soy weiners my kids love taste like nothing human beings should eat. But the ground
“beef” and other products are not bad at all.
I just really dislike junk food. Lays also offers Ketchup and chicken flavored potato chips. Eating that shit is wrong because it’s crap. I laugh at how people try to infer things about one’s religious orientation from this. BTW, Veggie burgers with cheese, soy or otherwise, are awesome.
The dislike of products like these is also typical of older generations. My father hates the idea of fake bacon and a rabbi whose shiur I go to hates the idea of potato bread for Pesach. It’s really just people resisting innovation rather than anything inherently halachic — the idea of “it violates the spirit of the halacha” is just a smoke screen.
The truth is, there isn’t really such a thing as “the spirit of halacha.” Either you follow the halacha or you don’t. Sure, there’s a concept of not being disgusting regarding things that are allowed (I can’t think of the Hebrew phrase at the moment), but it isn’t quite the same idea. And marit ayin is a much more intricate concept than people realize.
You predicted it in the Ayelet Waldman post. You are a certifiable genius, Esther.
Either that, or you might have a gift for fortune telling. 😉
I was reluctant to Google such a thing from my current undisclosed yeshiva-oriented location. I do believe I predicted this particular search term at some point, although I don’t think I have a record of the IM conversation that would prove it…
You’ll just have to face it: Google’s crushin’ on Jewlicious. Because of the aforementioned state of being super fantastic.
#2 for Jewish blog?!
There’s room for improvement, ck, lots of room…
Oh Good Grief. This love affair Google has with Jewlicious is ridiculous already. I mean thanks for the ridiculous traffic Sergei. But seriously …. why are we #1 for Jewish Vibrators? Why? Why!! Number 2 for “Jewish blog” is ok given that we are so super fantastic.
Muffti now finds himself agreeing with Ephraim. What a strange frew weeks it’s been. Muffti can vouch for the lack of any similarity between the taste of any kosher substitute and the real deal. This is as ridiculous as every vegetarian who has made Muffti eat some tofu-(name of meat here) and claimed no one could tell the difference. Ummn, yeah. Right.
Esther, have you googled “Jewish vibrators” yet? Check out the Ayelet Waldman/Michael Chabon post.
Maybe, metaphorically, premarital sex IS kosher bacon flavoring…
Besides, I saw actual Talmudic proof that both entities, however same or different they may be, conclusively lead to dancing.
How did we go from premarital sex to kosher bacon flavoring?
I’m a BT, and I grew up eating all sorts of trayf. I am here to tell you that the kosher “shrimp” that I have had taste absolutely nothing like the real thing, which are indescribably delicious and are the one trayf food for which I still retain a really serious craving. I occasionally get a twinge for other stuff, but resistng shrimp is a serious challenge, one to which I have been able to measure up, fortunately.
The kosher soy “bacon” made by Morningstar Farms is, however, remarkably like the real thing in taste and texture. It is really quite amazing. Their link suasage is pretty good, too.
Eating kosher food that appears to be trayf is like doing something on Shabbat that is halachically permitted but which just somehow doesn’t seem shabbesdich. This is a judgment call for every individual to make.
In any case, I’m with velvel.
“It’s Not Crab” is made from haddock to look like crab with the pink edges. Don’t know what kind of preservatives or colorings are used, but it can’t be as bad as all of the chemical things they put into various foodstuffs to create “bacon” or “cheese” flavors.
It’s a bit like getting the soya cheese and putting it on a hamburger so you can have a “cheese”burger. A few of my frummer friends like to do that.
If they enjoy the product, then why not?
Oh come on…. it *almost* sounds good when you say it in French and with a pretentious French accent… Bacon Fumé! BACON FUMÉ!!
ok… maybe not. I never have been a fan of smoked flavoured things anyway. Blecch. Tastes like I’m running through a burning field with my mouth gaping open.
I will, however, make an exception for the fake crab stick in my kosher California rolls, though…yum.
Hear, hear Velvel!
C’mon folks. When we read an article about some right-wing rabbi trying to declare sushi kosher because its not a “Jewish” food, we get all sorts of mocking comments. Yet, when someone makes a perfectly kosher product designed to imitate an unkosher one, we all suddenly become traditionalists. Are we all really so strict on keeping our halachot that we need to whine about a burgeoning variety of kosher products?
I, for one, have served guests a wonderful Shabbat meal of shrimp pad thai and Thai crab cakes (all kosher, of course). I can also do a great sausage and chicked jambalaya. Anytime one of y’all needs a Shabbat meal in St. Louis, let me know…that is, if such foods aren’t too gentile for you.
regarding the “spirit” of kashrut…
I find that people who keep (and have always kept) strict kosher, have no qualms about eating bacon-flavored or other fake bacon products.
Those that don’t feel as bound by halacha, and are into keeping the “spirit” of the mitzvot and not necessarily the mitzvot, are more troubled by the fake-traife.
I think the fake bacon flavor is awesome. Just like the manna of the desert, there is nothing forbidden about a flavor.
Hmm…And just as I was wondering where my next bacon fix was going to come from…Ck, save me that bag, I’m coming over.
I have still yet to get over the kosher OU bacon bits that use to be on sale here in the major super markets. I suppose only in Tiv Taam will you find these now. Er, probably real ones though. Damn Tiv Taam.
it just sounds like a sickening product, regardless of its kashrus — who the hell would want to eat a BACON-FLAVORED POTATO CHIP? eyyyuchhh…
They have a “fake cracklings” product in Israel, but unfortunately it comes in thick extruded-corn-snack shapes – and is colored to look like the bacon in a Fisher-Price play set. I am a BT and this stuff is just weird. Of course my kids don’t even know what it is supposed to taste like, it’s just another “Grill” or “Smoke” flavor to them. A friend crumbles these over her creamed potatoes instead of “Bac-os”.
Anyways, Kibbutz Tirat Zvi (yay!) now makes excellent beef prosciutto, which can be fried up nicely or used to make a top-notch kosher saltimboca.
I am MUCH more offended by the fake shrimp than by fake bacon. Maybe we’ve all become so used to soy-based products. But just the shape of those shrimp things gets to me.
Ben-David
I think that it’s violating the spirit of kashrut.
Seems, and is, wrong. My dad’s been collecting products like these whenever he finds them in the stores, just to prove a point, which he did in this year’s Purim issue of the Kustanowitz Kronikle, just scroll down to the Amazing But True Kosher Store for more ludicrously kosher products…
But you know it’s going to make the BTs happy!
Aarron’s Beef Fry makes me very, very happy.
I wonder if you can get those chips in Vancouver, CA?