TT: Lamb Bacon from Garden Path Farm at H Street Famers' Market

Nice piece from Tasting Table on Garden Path Farm's Lambcetta (lamb bacon) which is available every Saturday morning at the H Street Farmer's Market (625 H St).


Bacon's New Frontier: Garden Path Farm's lambcetta puts the "baa" in bacon

They wear flannel, sport Panama hats and adore bacon. But the folks behind Garden Path Farm aren't hipsters: They're Pennsylvania farmers who have sparked the next big trend in bacon.

The farm just debuted its reinterpretation of the ubiquitous cured meat, and it's entirely pork-free. Lambcetta ($10 per pound) is Italian-style cured meat that uses lamb in place of pork belly.

Owner Emanuel Kauffman makes the nouveau bacon from grass-fed heritage Katahdin lambs, which are prized for their mellow flavor.

They cure each batch of lamb belly with salt, pepper and a few secret spices. Each package holds a thick stack of razor-thin slices of salty, seductive marbled lamb.

The slices are delicate and sometimes difficult to peel off in one piece, but they also cook more quickly than their pork cousins and are a meatier companion to eggs, tasting like a cross between bacon and sausage.

The bacon is as good for lunch and dinner as it is for breakfast. Serve it with tzatziki in a pita for a Greek-style sandwich, or dice it with shallots on a meat lover's pizza. The Kauffmans also make sweet bologna ($8 per pound), so you can opt for a bologna-and-cheese instead of a BLT.

It's a cure for bacon overload.

Garden Path Farm's lamb bacon is available at the H St. Farmers' Market on Saturdays (9 a.m. to noon), 625 H St. NE, between Sixth and Seventh Sts.