I've never had salo, but tried several types of słonina (Romanian, Polish, and a weird Siberian brand I found at a Slavic store in... Porto). Looking at the wiki page for salo, it's very close to the PL/RO snack.
You're right that boczek has more flavour, esp. the home-made version if you can find it (super difficult, imo). Usually the home-made boczek will be meatier/more smoky/more garlicky than, the store bought-stuff.
Słonina has little flavour, besides slight smokiness + saltiness. Normally it's used to highlight the flavour of the next dish or as a snack served with vodka. Similarly to lard, you'd serve it before the main dish to make the palate more sensitive towards any fat-soluble flavours. I'd say słonina is 90-95% fat plus a barely noticeable amount of meat.
The Siberian one I got though... had waaaaay more garlic and a little bit of pepper. It was lovely, but something I'd eat at the "caviar serving" amounts.
Useless trivia #123: it's likely a coincidence but in Polish "słonina" literally means "elefant meat" ("słoń" /swoń/, comp. the suffix -ina w. "wołowina" for beef, "wieprzowina" for pork).
> Maybe I need to work on my tofu this year
Smoked tofu is sooo good. I have some good kimchi + gochujang I want to cook tonight with pork belly, but now you made me think of replacing the meat with some smoked tofu I bought.
Usually goes on my weak but improving attempts to replicate my #1 favorite BBQ, inihaw, but any kind of basic grilled meat over rice is a candidate.
I’ve been drinking Guinness and Heineken, plus other ones occasionally. Best cold. Some have been sour and meh, but they are definitely getting better and better. See also low alcohol cocktails. I used to get grape juice made from wine grapes, fabulous.
