It is a long-standing and well-accepted fact of life that everything is made better by bacon. Well, this at least holds true for foodstuffs, and for folks who consume bacon. Obviously, if you eat meat, and furthermore eat pork, then it is not entirely unreasonable to state that you are a fool for anything wrapped, infused, or otherwise doped with that sweet sweet salty sweet pig candy, bacon.

Still, there are those, even amongst my closest friends, who do not eat bacon. This leads me to ask: is there a vegetarian equivalent to bacon? Now let’s be very clear here: I’m not talking about veggie bacon, soy bacon crumbles, or other fakery. Real bacon is real bacon, and nothing else is close. No, what I’m after is the foodstuff that, for the vegetarian, has that same magical power to completely transform any/all other (vegetarian) foods to otherworldly greatness, in much the same manner as bacon is able to do for those of us with less herbivorian instincts.

Is there such a substance? An ingredient? Some magical vegetarian condiment with powers approaching those of mighty bacon?