Pork belly futures are looking pretty terrific. Oh, who knows how they're doing on the commodities market; the really bright future is in the popular craving for bacon.

You can see it not only in your own kitchen and in high-end restaurants, but in the variety of old-fashioned, smokehouse-style bacons now in specialty food markets. Our craving for the tasty strips is strictly based on taste; it doesn't get any nods for its health benefits.

Compare bacon to its classic sidekick, eggs--which got a reprieve from the nutrition community when research showed that eating a couple each week was fine. Even chocolate has gotten good marks lately for its alleged antioxidant benefits.

Bacon, on the other hand, is strictly an indulgence, with enough obvious fat that the eater can't begin to pretend that it's good for them. But hey, who cares? If loving it is wrong, plenty of Americans don't want to be right, seeing as how the National Pork Board reports that bacon sales increased 45 percent from 1999 to 2000, the latest figures available.

The majority of those sales are for the more common breakfast strips, which turn up in diner breakfasts, as fast-food burger embellishments and in home kitchens.

But look for more of the traditionally crafted bacons to appear in specialty markets, as the appreciation develops for a good, thick strip of bacon beautifully proportioned between tender, slow-smoked meat and lines of flavorful fat.

"Most people think of bacon as sliced paper-thin and when you cook it up you end up with a small piece and a large puddle of grease," said John Duyn, owner of the Carlton Packing Co. near Portland, Ore., a small producer of old-fashioned bacon.

The smokehouse-style meats are a long way from mass-produced bacon. And for that reason, serious bacon lovers as well as restaurant chefs pay close to $12 a pound for such brands as Carlton's or Nueske's instead of $5.40 for Oscar Mayer.

Around 1,000 people have joined the bacon-of-the-month club at The Grateful Palate, a food and wine mail-order business based in California, according to owner Dan Philips. The catalog features bacon from small producers in states you would associate with the product, such as Kentucky, and those you wouldn't, such as Connecticut.

Making bacon is a fairly standard process. Meat from the underside, or belly, of the pig, is cured and seasoned with salt, sugar and perhaps spices. Smoking bacon gives it additional flavor. Nitrites, which also give bacon its reddish color, can serve the same purpose as salt during the curing, and brine or smoke flavors can be injected into the meat to speed up the process.

What sets many of the specialty bacons apart are pigs fed a special diet of corn or organic grains. Prairie Grove Farms in DeKalb raise their pigs without antibiotics or hormones. And old-fashioned methods put the meat through a curing that takes around 10 days as opposed to a 24-hour cure, expedited by pressurized brines, commonly used by large food companies.

At John Duyn's company, the curing mixture is hand-rubbed into the bacon, slow-cured and smoked with alder and hickory wood before it makes it into the package. This is the same way his grandfather did it when the older man, an immigrant from Holland, first purchased the farm.

"You don't get that flavor development any other way," Duyn said.

The appeal of bacon is pretty widespread. Try to think of anything else that smells so great when it is crackling in the pan, that tastes so good next to a stack of pancakes and warm syrup, or that provides such an essential layer to a stacked sandwich.

With a number of superior products now on the market, bacon becomes a prize ingredient in high-end dishes instead of simply a guilty pleasure more at home on a diner's griddle.

"I couldn't live without it," said chef Bruce Sherman of North Pond restaurant in Lincoln Park, who keeps a squeeze-able toy pig on the top of his computer and praises bacon's ability to complement fish, meat, potatoes and vegetables.

"It's a bold flavor that just adds dimension, a great component to any dish."

For instance, his latest menu features grilled monkfish wrapped in bacon with a red wine sauce. The high heat crisps the cooking bacon, while the fat protects the fish and keeps it moist.

In the pizza world, where sausage and pepperoni have long reigned as the meats of choice, bacon has shown legs as a popular topping at Piece, the restaurant that opened last year in Wicker Park.

Bacon is a common pizza topping in New Haven, Conn., according to former resident and Piece owner Bill Jacobs, who likes to add it to a white pizza (one free of tomato sauce) with fresh tomatoes. "It just gives pizza a nice smoky flavor."

Other chefs around town have found elegant ways to slip bits of bacon onto their menu. John Hogan of Keefer's in River North sprinkles it onto salads; one, a mix of greens with poached egg and croutons, the other a tossed plate of chicken with vegetables and a Champagne vinaigrette.

The new patio menu at NoMI in the Park Hyatt hotel features brochettes, or skewers, of salmon paired with apple wood smoked bacon and pimiento and served over a bed of braised fennel.

Yet we can't ignore bacon's welcome role at the breakfast table. Writer Cheryl Alters Jamison, author with husband Bill of "A Real American Breakfast," says the idea of "sweet and meat seems to be an American notion."

Bacon with pancakes or waffles with maple syrup are natural pairings, especially with the "natural sweetness and nuttiness of the meat," said Jamison.

It's not unusual to get batty about bacon. This particular part of the pig thrives precisely because of that kind of devotion.

OK, some people might consider Sara Perry's enthusiasm extreme. The Portland, Ore., author not only came up with dozens of recipes while writing her newest cookbook, "Everything Tastes Better with Bacon," she even delved into desserts, providing recipes for bacon brittle ("Sort of like peanut brittle") and an apple pie with cheese and bacon bits in the crust.

"I realized that bacon is one of those ingredients you use as a food, like at breakfast, but also is a wonderful flavoring, used as one would use a good spice or wine," Perry said of the research she did for the book, to be published in July by Chronicle. "Besides its enticing flavor it has irresistible crunch so it adds another sensation."

Just ask the man whose love for the piggy product is so great that he had an artist design a silk-screened, bacon-themed poster:

"We sell a lot of food products that are popular," Philips of The Grateful Palate said, "but bacon is the one thing that everyone loves."

It just gives you a warm feeling inside, doesn't it?

How to cook bacon perfectly

In a skillet: Slice strips in half crosswise. Place in a large skillet over medium-low heat without crowding. If strips overlap they won't cook evenly.

1. Turn bacon regularly as it cooks. Because pans have hot spots, move the strips around, switching ones in the middle with those on the outside. The bacon will take 5-10 minutes to cook, depending on the bacon, the pan and the heat.

2. Just before you think the bacon has reached perfection, remove it and drain on paper towels.

It will continue to cook as little as it sits.

3. To control the sizzling grease you can use a spatter guard, sold at many cookware and department stores. Or try these other methods from "Everything Tastes Better with Bacon."

Baking: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place wire racks on a jellyroll pan. Arrange a single layer of bacon on the racks and bake to desired crispness, 15-20 minutes. It is not necessary to turn the slices.

Broiling: Heat the broiler. Arrange the bacon in a single layer on the broiler pan's slotted top. Place the pan so that the bacon is 3 inches from the heat. Broil to desired crispness, 5-7 minutes, turning once for even browning.

Microwaving: Place 6-8 bacon slices between layers of paper towels on a microwaveable plate. Cook on high for 6-8 minutes, turning the bacon a quarter-turn every 2 minutes.

TASTINGS

Cooking up some winners

There was no way the Good Eating staff was going to listen to all this talk about specialty bacon without trying some. We conducted a blind taste test of 11 brands, all thick-cut style. We threw in one ringer, the nationally distributed Oscar Mayer brand, which comes in a thick-cut version.

What we were looking for were strips that had a good balance of meat and fat, preferably on the meaty side. The flavor needed to be a true pork flavor with a gentle sweetness and a natural-tasting smokiness.

1. Out on top came Nueske's Smoked Bacon from Wisconsin. Tasters praised its "hamlike quality" and "full flavor."

2. Right on its heels was Boar's Head Brand Naturally Smoked Sliced Bacon, which got high marks for its "even, pretty" color and "good campfire aroma."

3. In third place was Carlton Packing Co.'s Dry Cured Sliced Bacon, from Carlton, Ore. It pleased tasters with a "sweet, maplelike aroma" and "nice chewy texture."

Other bacons tasted, in order of preference: Jansal Valley New Hampshire Cobb Smoked Country Bacon; Niman Ranch Real Applewood Smoked Dry Cured Bacon; Oscar Mayer Hearty Thick Cut Bacon and Carousel Farms of Iowa Hickory Smoked Sliced Bacon (tie); West Virginia Brand Thick Sliced Bacon; Pure Farms Center Cut Seasoned Uncured Bacon; Whole Foods Uncured Center Cut Smokehouse Bacon; and Father's Hickory Smoked Country Bacon.

-- Kristin Eddy