She said we didn't have to bring anything.
We were the only people who brought stuff.
But since we brought homemade caramel corn and candied bacon, no one complained.
A friend of mine posted on Facebook that she was making candied bacon as part of a breakfast-for-dinner dinner Saturday night. I showed the DDH, and he decided that he pretty much couldn't live another day without trying it himself.
It's sweet and salty with a cayenne kick and would probably make a lovely Valentine's gift for the meat-lover in your life. ;-)
Candied Bacon
Preheat the oven (or broiler) to 350 degrees.
Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil. Set a broiling rack or cooling rack (ovenproof) on top of your foil-covered baking sheet.
Find a nice, bacon-length container: a large bowl, a long Tupperware dish, whatever.
In this container, mix together 1 cup brown sugar and 3/4 tsp. cayenne pepper. Make sure it's well mixed, or you're going to get really spicy bites and bites with no spice at all.
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| You can't really tell, but it's more orange than plain brown sugar. |
Lay the bacon strips, sugar-side up, on your broiling rack.
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| Don't worry if they look only sparsely coated. I had to google how to spell sparsely because I kept wanting to spell it like parsley. |
Bake until delicious. It took us about thirty minutes, and the bacon never really got crispy, just golden brown and chewy (and yummy, but the DDH was hoping for crispy). If you have thinner bacon or a hotter oven, your results may vary. You may want to start with about fifteen minutes and go from there.
Note: So, the DDH informs me that he baked these on the top shelf of the oven, when what he should have done is broiled them on the top shelf of the oven. So it's possible that broiling them at 350 will produce crispy candied bacon. Baking them if, for some reason, you are inexplicably terrified of the broiler (like I am), works perfectly well and results in safe and delicious bacon. So it's up to you.
Chop up and poke with toothpicks for sanitary (and classy) party presentation. ^_^
The DDH's boss's daughter, who's maybe seven or so, loved this stuff. She told her mom she was going to the kitchen to get dessert, and she came back with a plate full of candied bacon.
I've updated the caramel corn recipe with the results of yesterday's batch, as well. And while the DDH did all this yummy caramel cooking, I made potato soup! So watch for that recipe coming soon.
This sounds delicious! My mom has a recipe for bacon-wrapped dates that is sort of similar (sweet, yet deliciously bacon-y!)
ReplyDeleteBasically you just wrap half a strip of uncooked bacon around a pitted date (if you want some kick shake a tiny bit of chili powder onto the inside of the bacon before wrapping), stick a toothpick through it to hold it together and broil it for about 8-10 minutes. Sometimes they don't reheat super well though, the date can get gluey and tough...
Oh man. Those sound awesome.
ReplyDeleteI've also made li'l smokies dipped in brown sugar and wrapped in bacon and sometimes involving a sweet barbecue sauce...sigh. Bacon wins, forever.