Special Dinner: Jelly Bean Jump Up Hosts a Mini Camp Bacon

Celebrating SafeHouse Center, Nueske’s, and an amazing Corgi

On Tuesday evening, March 31, we’ll gather to support SafeHouse Center, our local shelter for survivors of domestic abuse. It’s an especially meaningful evening for me—it marks the 11th annual Jelly Bean Jump Up, held in honor of my beloved Corgi, Jelly Bean. When she passed away in the spring of 2015, we wanted to celebrate her loving spirit in a way that would serve the community, just as she brought so much joy and generosity to our lives for 17 years. Because SafeHouse Center does such important work—and because we live nearby, where the staff would often see Jelly Bean and me running past—we chose it as the cause to commemorate her memory.

This year’s dinner feels especially meaningful—it will be a bit of a redux of Camp Bacon, the fundraising event we ran annually for the 10 years leading up to Covid. We had educational speakers, cooking classes, special dinners like this one, and a bacon street fair at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. This dinner is also a great opportunity to celebrate the wonderful relationship we’ve built with the Nueske family over the last 44 years.

Eleven days from today, we will celebrate the 44th anniversary of what has evolved over the years into Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. A deep heartfelt thanks to all of you for your encouragement, support, and patience over all these years. One of our Guiding Principles talks about our dedication to long-term relationships—many of you have been with us from the beginning. That is also true of many of our suppliers. In fact, March 15 will also mark the 44th anniversary of cooking Nueske’s applewood smoked bacon. Their commitment to quality, generosity of spirit, shared values, and dedication to dignity in every direction have made our connection with the Nueske family one of the most rewarding elements of those 44 years. If being kind, caring, and doing the right thing are the way human beings are meant to be—and I believe that from the heart—then Nueske’s, per what I wrote last week, are wholly unordinary in the best possible ways.

If you eat bacon and you’ve come to Zingerman’s regularly over the years, the odds are high you’ve already appreciated the wonderful meaty, gently salted, subtly sweet, beautifully smoky deliciousness that Nueske’s bacon has always been about. If you want a big-time testimonial about this bacon, take it from the late and very great writer, R.W. Apple, who put in print in The New York Times that Nueske’s was “the beluga of bacon, the Rolls-Royce of rashers.”

Tanya Nueske, granddaughter of the founder, Robert Nueske, is as passionate about her product as you’re going to get. Even though she’s been around applewood smoked bacon her entire life, she still loves to talk about it, sell it, and eat it. “I eat bacon so much. I eat it plain all the time. Basically, we use bacon with everything!”

“What we do is a very old tradition,” she told me. “My grandfather started selling the bacon in 1933. He started out smoking over applewood. And he had a way of doing it and a style that came from his grandparents.” Robert’s parents, Wilhelm and Wilhelmina Nueske, came to Wisconsin from Prussia in 1882—exactly 100 years before we opened the Deli.

Given all that I’ve already said over the years and in “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy” about raw materials, it’s no surprise that bacon this good starts with special pork. Nueske’s sources higher-quality hogs, crossbred with Pietrain pigs because of the latter’s excellent lean-to-fat ratio. We’ve been working with our suppliers for well over 25 years. And we still hand-trim everything.”

The Nueskes cure fresh slabs of bacon in brine, hang them to dry for a day or so, and then smoke them for at least another day. Tanya says, “When you smoke slowly over genuine applewood embers for a full 24 hours, the sweetness of the smoke really has a chance to permeate each cut of meat and impart our signature flavor.” They approach the smoking process as a craft:

We design our smokehouses ourselves and have them built for us. The smoking is all hand-controlled by the smokemaster, but it’s still a very artisan thing. … The smokemaster will tell you that each smokehouse is different. And we still use actual applewood logs. People should know that “applewood smoke” can mean almost anything these days—apple juice, apple smoke flavoring, liquid smoke. … But we only use real logs of Wisconsin applewood.

Without question, over all these years, Nueske’s has proven one of the most popular foods we’ve got for sale anywhere in our organization. Its flavor is on the mellower side, with soft sweetness from the applewood that I think amplifies the natural sweetness in the high-quality pork the family goes to such lengths to source. We sell lots of it for folks to take home to cook in their own kitchens, and we also use it extensively here in our own businesses. If you come visit, you can try it on any number of sandwiches at the Deli, in the collard greens at the Roadhouse, or the Potato Bacon Rétes at the Bakehouse. It’s become a big hit on what we call the 24-7 Burger—the bacon, having been smoked for 24 hours, sitting astride a couple slices of 7-year-old Wisconsin cheddar, which in turn has been melted over a burger of freshly ground, dry-aged, Roadhouse beef. (It’s not on the actual menu right now, but just ask, and we’ll happily make you one!)

Whether you’re just buying some Nueske’s bacon to enjoy at home, coming into the Deli to eat a an amazing BLT, or better still, are able to join us for this special dinner on March 31, thank you for caring, thank you for supporting us over all these years, and thank you for supporting SafeHouse Center in their ever more important work!

See you there?

P.S. If you can’t make the dinner, and/or don’t eat meat, you can still support the Jelly Bean Jump Up for Safehouse Center through our silent auction, or donate directly to Safehouse.

P.P.S. Nueske’s bacon is part of Mail Order’s annual spring sale! Same great bacon as always, but for the next few weeks, at a really great price! Stock up!