Twitter Is Totally Freaking Out Over This Eggplant Bacon Video

Eating bacon is one of life’s great pleasures. A crispy, salty, smoky slice of perfectly cooked bacon is pure joy. People apparently feel very strongly about it, too, because a new video demonstrating how to make eggplant taste like bacon is making the rounds on social media, and a lot of people are furious.

There are a lot of bacon substitutes available in the world, but for the most part they fall short when compared to a good, crispy slice of actual bacon. Very few alternatives manage to capture bacon’s meaty essence and crisp texture. But eggplant actually does a pretty good job at mimicking bacon. Its flavor is meaty and savory to start with, and it crisps up nicely when sliced thin and fried in a cast iron pan.

There are several different ways to make eggplant bacon. A cast iron skillet works well. Some people use food dehydrators to make eggplant bacon chips, which seem like they’d be great crumbled on top of salads.

Yesterday Delish put their spin on it with a recipe video for eggplant bacon baked in the oven, and the internet responded with pure outrage. It’s like

pea guacamole

People don’t like it when you mess with their favorite things, and bacon is a lot of people’s favorite thing right now. But vegans and vegetarians and people who don’t eat pork exist, and they deserve bacon too, or at least something reasonably close to bacon.

People who have tried eggplant bacon say they like it.

Even people who do eat meat can appreciate a good slice of eggplant bacon, especially as a way of eating more BLTs. And a person who might balk at eating a huge bouquet of bacon in one sitting might greatly enjoy snacking on bacon-flavored eggplant chips. There’s room in the world for real bacon and eggplant bacon to coexist.

For all the bacon purists out there, don’t worry. Real bacon still exists. You don’t even have to try the eggplant bacon if you don’t want to. But if you do try it, you might like it. And if you want to try your hand at this eggplant variation, we also have a great recipe for the stuff.

Get the recipe: Eggplant Bacon