Six Degrees of Bacon | Ohio Food Photographer

Setting up to do a promotional piece for Photo Kitchen, bacon seemed like the obvious choice. It's so popular right now, put bacon on ANYTHING and people will eat it. So I put it on paper. Yum. 

This post is mostly eye candy, but there is a recipe in here for you to try. It's for Candied Bacon. One of my clients Bleu and Fig, a catering company, introduced me to this wonderful idea. Give the people what they want: bacon on top of bacon. Simple sweet and salty candied strips of bacon.

Irresistible Candied Bacon
(warning: this recipe is simple, but time-consuming and requires much dishwashing.)

12 slices bacon, about 1/4-inch thick Center Cut bacon
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1//2 tsp finely ground black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  You’ll want 4 rectangular baking dishes, such as  casserole dishes. Metal dishes will cook the bacon faster than glass dishes. Either is fine. Put all of the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and mix thoroughly.  Take each bacon slice and toss it into the bowl, making sure to coat the slice thoroughly. Lay the bacon slices flat into the dishes without overlapping. Sprinkle any sugar left in the bowl over the bacon.

Bake for 20 minutes. Check the bacon. If it is not golden brown and fairly crispy, resist the temptation to turn up the oven temperature, and cook it for 10 to 15 minutes longer. Check it again. When you remove the tray and transfer the bacon to a serving platter or individual plates, the bacon will "crisp" up a little more.

Let sit only 2 minutes after pulling it out of the oven. The sugar needs to solidify somewhat so it doesn't slip off the bacon. If you wait too long, it will stick. Transfer each piece onto a cooling rack. Let it sit on the plate another 4-5 minutes. Then you can eat it or transfer it to an air-tight container. Bacon can sit outside the refrigerator for up to one day. After that, refrigeration is best, but eat at room temperature.

Parchment paper may make the clean-up easier. Pouring hot water into the pans made the sugar melt and sped up the cleaning process.