The smoky, salty flavor is the best part of bacon when you're eating it straight up, but when you're cooking with it, sometimes the salt and smoke can overpower the other ingredients in the dish. The community at Chowhound offer this tip when you're cooking with bacon as an ingredient: blanch it for between five to ten minutes, but no longer.
Some dishes require bacon as an ingredient that adds salt and flavor, but that isn't the star of the show (coq au vin or beef bourguignon, for example), and just using less isn't an option because the dish may depend on the added fat. You can compromise and get bacon's delicious flavor, the fat to help cook the dish, and let the other flavors shine through with a quick hot water bath.
The Chowhound user who tried this noted that after five minutes of blanching, a notoriously salty/smoky bacon that he used toned down, but it retained its smoky flavor. After ten minutes, the saltiness remained but the smoke was almost gone. More than that though, like 15 minutes, and the bacon just fell apart. They also note that you could switch out bacon for salt pork instead, and blanching that will tame the salt, but since it's not smoked you won't have to worry about that. Hit the link below for more tips and the original thread.
Blanching Bacon | Chowhound via Chow
Photo by cookbookman17.
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