Amazon, pork bellies

[thistlechaser]

It's very very rare to have your customer service experience exceed even your hopes. I have a growing number of issues with Amazon, but their customer service is not one of them.

I bought a new cooling pad/fan setup for my laptop through them, same one as my previous now-dying one. By happy chance, there was a $10 rebate on it... but only on the version with "fustration-free" packaging, not traditional packaging. Odd, but I like fustration-free packaging better anyway, so that was fine. I suspected that might become a problem when it came to the rebate, and it turned out I was right.

The rebate required the UPC code from the packaging. Fustration-free packaging = no packaging.

Last thing before bed last night, I emailed Amazon asking them if they could send me a replacement code. I suspected they wouldn't/couldn't do that and I'd have to ask firmly for a $10 refund on the price instead.

This morning I woke up to an email saying they issued me a $10 refund and apologized for the trouble. I know $10 is nothing to Amazon, but a lot of companies would dig in their heels and at least make me jump through hoops/demand the refund. It was a nice surprise that they just gave it to me.

--

Pork bellies, on the other hand, are NOT a nice surprise. I was in Trader Joe the other day, looking for food I could make during the week. Wandering the meat section, I saw a box of pork belly. The only thing I knew about it previously was that it's something they talk about on those morning farm reports in the midwest -- I was kind of surprised that it was not only a real thing, but that I was encountering it here in California.

The box made it look just like loin of pork -- mostly white (cooked) pork meat with just a tiny layer of golden fat at the top. Precooked, all you needed to do was "brown and eat". Seemed perfect, so I bought it.

When I got it home, I opened the box. Any appetite I had vanished. It was covered in a thick layer of... goo. I have no idea what it was. The more detailed version of the instructions said you had to wash that goo off. Whatever the hell it was, it stuck to my hands like nothing else. Greasy, slimy, seriously gross.

The meat under the goo looked no better. I know pictures on boxes lie, but this was like putting a picture of a roasted turkey on it when the box really contains a rock. The meat was more than 90% fat. Not just fat, it had a really gross texture? to look at. Just so disgusting.

However, it had been semi-expensive (what at Trader Joe's isn't?) so I figured I should at least try it. I cut off the least fatty part I could find (still more than 50% fat) and fried it up.

Fat is flavor, and bacon is wonderful, so how in the world did this stuff have no flavor? Gross, gross, gross. I threw most of it out, but what little I ate made me feel sick for the rest of the day.

So the lesson for today: Unless you're trading in them, avoid pork bellies.

Comments

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Pork belly == bacon, essentially. There's a bit more complexity than that, but for your purposes, yes you tried to cook a huge lump of bacon after trimming the fat. Normally to cook pork belly, you wash it, dry it, and cook it however you cook bacon (not microwave). The resulting meat should be crisp on the outside, flavorful, and fatty as all hell.

I'm not a big fan of pork belly, for that reason. Lately it is kind of a hipster food thing, don't really understand why.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

But bacon has flavor and this stuff tasted like nothing. I did cook it that way (washed, dried, sliced, browned in a pan), but even the brownest, crispest parts weren't any good.

*joins you in not being a fan*

[pure-trance.livejournal.com]

Well bacon is cured, so it tastes different in that way. Maybe you should have brined the pork belly or something? Eaten it with sauce?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Or at least have salted it. The instructions said "brown and eat" though, didn't mention seasoning it, so I had thought it would be table-ready. Even the longer instructions didn't mention that! Though how something is both "ready to eat" and yet still needs goo washed off it... maybe I should have questioned the instructions more!