Bacon Candy

[jducoeur]

Okay, this insanity has evolved well enough that it's worth posting.

Mara turned me on to Slow-Cooked Bacon a few years ago, and I've extolled its virtues before -- I call it "Bacon Candy", and often keep some in the fridge for snacking and ingredients.

But a couple of months ago, I woke up one morning with the combined flavors of bacon and Korean Hot Sauce in my mouth, and had a sudden epiphany. Slow-cooked bacon is *basically* jerky, and most people don't make jerky plain -- they add flavors! So what flavors would work on bacon?

I've been experimenting for a couple of months now: I've been through four experimental batches, with a wide variety of flavorings, experimenting with time and temp (which turns out to be critical for these flavored versions). I'm still experimenting actively, but am finally getting to the point where I have half a dozen variants that are working pretty well. So I added the concept of "Variations" to my Querki Recipes Space, and have written up the master recipe, with the Variations that are working reasonably well at the bottom.

Obviously this is trafe-tastic, so not relevant to anybody keeping kosher, but the bacon fans in the audience may want to check it out...

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Your recipe is for bacon. Oven roasted bacon, but bacon. It's a great technique, and most people have switched to doing some variation of that method. (Of course, save the drippings for flavoring of other dishes...)

Bacon Candy is bacon coated with brown sugar. It's amazing.

About 4 years ago, Robin did a promotional event for her jams at an event in Somerville called Cupcake Camp Boston.

Everything featured one or more of the jams that we make. One of our jams is called Chocolate Fig Sunshine. It's corresponding cupcake was Chocolate PIG Sunshine, and featured sprinkles of bacon candy on the top.

It's hard to beat the flavor of figs, chocolate, citrus, and bacon.

[jducoeur]

Mmm -- haven't tried that one yet, although it's on my list. My higher priority so far has been experimenting with Maple Syrup, since that's a combination everybody kind of expects; not there yet, although making progress.

As for drippings, my only problem is that I quickly build up far too *much* of them: one pound of slow-cooked bacon produces a *lot* of fat, more than I need. I've gradually learned to keep it now and then, but I don't need to try keeping all of it.

(And an unfortunate side-effect of the flavored versions is that they tend to corrupt the otherwise-clean fat. Although I was intrigued by the color of the fat from the Curried Bacon -- if I make an entire tray of that sometime, I may have to save the fat and see what it's like...)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

You have two challenges - your temperature is too low (most people candy bacon at higher temperatures) and maple syrup is a rather soft flavor, delicious though it is.

I suspect you'd get better bacon overall if you cooked it at 400 for 15-20 minutes, rather than a lower temperature for quite so long. Since bacon is already cured, low-and-slow shouldn't be changing the proteins all that much from the traditional higher temperature cooking. But whether you slow-cook or cook at a high temperature, sugar flavors want a very hot oven indeed.

A smoked salt added to the maple would probably help intensify the flavors. Of course, if you are using Oscar Meyer, the last thing you want is more salt.

I can imagine a savory "curried bacon fat" cornbread, and I like it. Especially with fresh corn in it... Most of the savory-fats would be awesome as a flavoring agent in stir-fry.

I imagine that if you bought whole bacon, roasted low-slow, and then sliced and flavored at a high temperature, you'd have something really cool to eat.

[jducoeur]

You have two challenges - your temperature is too low (most people candy bacon at higher temperatures)

Could be. I like the fool-proof-ness of the low-temp method in general, and the resulting texture, and most of the toppings I'm playing with turn out to require *extremely* low temps in order to work well -- they over-evaporate / caramelize / burn at even 250. But it may be that the sugar flavors need a different approach.

maple syrup is a rather soft flavor

Yaas. I've already concluded that I need a robust B-grade maple in order to get any real flavor out of it. Still need to see whether two coats of that produces enough to be interesting.

[laurion]

Skip straight to maple sugar?

[jducoeur]

Intriguing idea, although maple sugar tends to be fairly mildly flavored itself. But I probably have some around, so it's worth a try.

Indeed, I have a *lot* of flavored sugars, several of which are probably worth trying. Now that you bring up the idea, I'll have to see how the Ginger Sugar that I picked up from Auntie Arwen does...