Trader Joe's Smoked Salmon Bacon

For the most part, Sonia and I both love salmon, and we both love Trader Joe's. But when unusual salmon products pop up at TJ's, we've found that they're always a bit of a gamble. The WG@TJ's team has seen everything from two kinds of salmon jerky to bagged pasta with salmon to salmon pastrami—and that's just scratching the surface. Some of those products got the thumbs up, and some went straight back to TJ's for a no-hassle refund.

Now I love turkey bacon, and I was quite eager to try yet another "meat" turned into bacon, so this seemed like a logical purchase, despite a spotty salmon track record. No, not spotted salmon...I meant...ugh, nevermind.

As far as traditional bacon lovers go, they're probably not gonna love this. Most "normal" bacon fanatics tolerate turkey bacon, at best. And this is yet a step further from pork bacon.

But on the plus side, it's not revolting. At least we didn't think so. This might be a pescatarian's dream come true.

This bacon has a peculiar texture, both crispy and slightly chewy. Sonia thought it seemed like a synthetic mouthfeel—almost like a plastic intended for eating. The cooking instructions call for heating in a "lightly-oiled" pan, so the grease-factor of the finished product will depend on just how "lightly" you oiled that pan. I may have erred on the side of "moderate" oiling since the fish is significantly leaner than most bacon. If traditional bacon is naturally fatty and greasy, it's far less dependent upon added oils for flavor. I think the couple extra drops of olive oil I added helped the taste and maybe the texture, too. Also, I wouldn't say the product ever "browned" per se like the packaging suggests it might, but rather, it simply turned a darker shade of pink.

The "smoked" flavor in the salmon does approximate that of traditional smoked bacon to some extent. I actually found it quite pleasant. There's not a tremendous amount of fishiness, but I mean, it's salmon, so there is some, particularly at the finish. The product smells like fish, too, but not overwhelmingly so. It's salty and savory and again, in my case, a bit oily.

Sonia said she wanted to try the product raw and treat it like salted, smoked lox and have it with a bagel or something just to see what it was like. To date, neither she nor I have actually been adventurous enough to do this, though.

At five bucks per package, it's not cheap, but then I guess they aren't exactly giving away regular bacon these days, either. Score-wise, I think we'll slap this puppy with double three and a halfs.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

(Projected score for traditional bacon lovers: 0 out of 10)