About a month ago, a friend sent me a link to a receipie for bacon jam. Bacon Jam ? Lets roll back a bit. I was flipping through a martha stewart cookie issue (yes martha and cookies are my friends) and they had a section for the more "adventuring" types. In this, I discovered ginger bacon cookies, which I just had to make - along some yummy burbon pecan cookies. at the same time I discovered a "bacon, its what's for desert" that included everything including bacon ice cream!! So I had brought the cookies to work to share my newly discovered desert food, which is why someone forwarded me the bacon jam link - thinking I might actualy try it.
And I just had to!!
So I started with a pound of bacon and fried it up. i must admit, at this point in time I already had a problem trying to keep my hands off it! The has pitures but I wasn't too sure of what this all would look like in the end.
As well I fried up a thinly sliced onion. It asked for brown onion but all I had was red. In hind sight way too much onion.
Once this was done, it was all put into a cast iron pot to simmer. I originaly put the lid on so that I would not have to add waterr, but that just made it longer. The reciepie does not say lid on or off - but some of the comments confirmed I was not the only one that ran into the issues.
Once i took the lid off I let it simmer for another hour - a total of two hours. There was still alot of liquid, so I kept it simmering. Once I tasted the bacon, it was falling appart so I figured I should stop but the liquid worried me - it looked like alot of fat. While i was lightly stiring to check for scotching, I stirred alittle more vigourously and the whole thing looked like it was emulsifying! Excelent!
At this point I let it all cool a little and passed it in the food prcessor. While I wanted something a little smooth, like a pate, but I think I mixed it a little too much since it was a little airy.
In the end,while it was pretty tasty and smooth, it wasway too sweet. Next Time as I already stated, less onions. there was alot of sugar in this, but it is the slow caramelisation of the onions that realy added to it. There was not enough bacon flavor - I will need a smokier bacon or to put some liquid smoke in it.
Try it for yourself and follow the link to
Bacon jam - not quite nigella- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
