Bacon Nation: 125 Irresistible Recipes (3 page)

A Matter of Taste

There are all kinds of flavored bacons on the market today. We encourage you to try these different bacons. For the most part we’ve written our recipes calling for unflavored hickory- or applewood-smoked bacon, but go ahead and experiment.

Storing Bacon

Bacon was originally created as a way to extend the length of time fresh pork could be kept. But that doesn’t mean forever. Store bacon in the coldest part of the refrigerator. Always check the use-by date, although you can usually go a few days past the date without fear. Cook and eat the bacon within a week after opening the package. If it develops mold or smells rancid, heave it.

You can freeze bacon in its unopened package for up to one month. If you don’t want to thaw a whole package, then wrap small amounts of bacon, say, two to six slices, tightly in plastic wrap and store them in the freezer in airtight freezer bags. All frozen bacon should be thawed before cooking. Soak the freezer bag in warm water for about 10 minutes to quickly defrost the frozen slices.

Recipes Optional

The most important thing that we hope you can take from this book is that bacon is an ingredient whose only limits are the cook’s imagination. Just like salt, or pepper, or rosemary, or butter, bacon is something to turn to when dreaming up a recipe—which is to say, you don’t always need our recipes or anybody’s recipes. Many of our favorites started with us looking at what was on the kitchen shelves and in the fridge and then making something up on the basis of what we had on hand.

To put this assertion to the test, let’s have a look around our kitchen and see what we can improvise. We have some pasta on the shelf, some fresh vegetables, and maybe a fresh herb like thyme or oregano. We have tomatoes—fresh and canned—but we’re not of the school of pasta-sauce makers that says it always has to be a red sauce where tomatoes dominate. At the same time, we are not in the mood for a creamy or super-cheesy sauce. So we settle on vegetables, our goal being a dish that has as much vegetable as pasta, which is the best way we know to keep enjoying pasta without loading up on carbs.

Once we put pasta, say, linguine or perciatelli, on to cook, we chop and sauté some bacon and set it aside. (All the amounts will depend on how many people we’re serving.) We dice an onion and cook it in the bacon drippings, with a little olive oil if it’s needed, until it’s softened. Then we throw in garlic, grated fresh ginger, red pepper flakes, coarsely diced zucchini and bell pepper, and maybe some fresh thyme or oregano. When the vegetables are soft and tender (but not overcooked), we add the cooked bacon, along with a few cherry tomatoes cut in half. To this skillet sauce of mostly vegetables, we add the cooked, drained pasta, along with a little bit of the boiling pasta water. Finally, if it’s needed, we add just enough olive oil to the sauce to moisten the pasta. Freshly grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper provide the finishing touches. So there you have it, a simple dish made from no recipe at all, with bacon adding its qualities of salt, meat, smokiness, and fat.

And While We’re at It, Some More Ideas

Here are some other “nonrecipe” recipes that make good use of bacon. The list could go on and on, but you’ll get the picture. Once you start thinking of bacon as a recipe ingredient, you’ll find endless delicious ways to enhance your everyday meals.

• For a quick appetizer, roll handmade balls of goat cheese, flavored with chopped fresh basil or thyme, in finely chopped pieces of black pepper-flavored bacon.
  
• Wrap thin slices of raw bacon around bread sticks or asparagus spears and bake them in a 350˚F oven until the bacon is crisp and brown, about 25 minutes.
  
• Use 2 to 3 tablespoons of bacon drippings, instead of butter or vegetable oil, to pop popcorn and then toss cooked diced pieces of bacon into the popped popcorn.
  
• Compose a salad of mixed greens dressed with a mayonnaise and mustard vinaigrette. Then toss in ripe cherry tomatoes, 1-inch pieces of cooked bacon, and toasted croutons. Enjoy your deconstructed BLT!
  
• Add cooked, diced bacon to your favorite mayonnaise-based or German potato salad and use some of the bacon drippings as a substitute for some of the fat in the dressing for either salad.
  
• Add crumbled cooked bacon, diced garlic, and chopped scallions to cooked lentils or dried beans and toss with a balsamic vinegar dressing for a healthy salad.
  
• Add browned, diced bacon to chicken salad recipes along with chopped green apples, celery, and sweetened dried cranberries.
  
• Toss ½-inch pieces of cooked bacon into thick soups, such as pea or cream of broccoli or even Manhattan clam chowder.
  
• Add cooked, diced bacon to scrambled eggs, omelets, and quiches.
  
• Top open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches with cooked slices of bacon, then broil them until the bacon is warmed through and the cheese is thoroughly melted.
  
• Sprinkle cooked, crumbled bacon on top of open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches along with toasted sunflower seeds and raisins.
  
• Place three slices of cooked bacon on top of a slice of toasted multigrain bread spread with a super-chunky peanut butter. Top with a second toasted slice of bread, cut the sandwich in half, and serve.
  
• Spread a flour tortilla with our Bacon Aioli (
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  ), then layer two to three slices of smoked or pepper-flavored turkey, sliced avocado, and red onion on top. Wrap up the tortilla and eat.
  
• Instead of sausage, top your favorite pizza with 1-inch-long slices of lightly browned bacon before baking.
  
• Sprinkle 1-inch pieces of uncooked bacon over a roasting pan filled with 1-inch cauliflower florets, sliced red onion, and 2 to 3 cloves of garlic. Drizzle extra-virgin olive oil on top, sprinkle the cauliflower with curry powder and freshly ground black pepper to taste, and bake it in a 375˚F oven until the cauliflower is tender, about 30 minutes.
  
• Add cooked ¼-inch pieces of bacon and cloves of roasted garlic to mashed potatoes.
  
• Add cooked ¼-inch pieces of bacon to stuffed twice-baked potatoes.
  
• Add cooked ½-inch pieces of bacon to creamed spinach, using some of the bacon fat to make the creamy sauce.
  
• Sprinkle a mixture of cooked, crumbled bacon, chopped fresh herbs, and bread crumbs on top of baked or grilled ½-inch-thick slices of summer tomatoes or Vidalia onions and bake or grill them until the topping is golden brown.
  
• Sprinkle cooked pieces of bacon on grilled summer vegetables and toss them with an herb vinaigrette.
  
• Use bacon as a finishing touch for such cooked vegetables as broccoli, green beans, and summer squash. Cook diced bacon, save the bacon drippings, and drain the cooked bacon on paper towels. Heat the bacon drippings in a large skillet, add some chopped onion or shallots, and cook them until lightly browned. Then, add the cooked vegetables, cover the skillet, and cook until the vegetables are warmed through. Stir in the drained bacon and let everything cook for a minute or so. Season the vegetables with salt and pepper to taste and serve.
  
• Add cooked, diced pieces of bacon and some bacon fat to biscuit and quick bread batters, substituting an equal measure of the bacon drippings for whatever other fat is called for in the recipe, then bake as directed.
  
• Add cooked, diced bacon to pancake batter or sprinkle the browned bacon pieces over pancakes before drizzling maple syrup on top.
  

Hold the Salt

 

Bacon is salty—so, in making any recipe with bacon, our recommendation is to wait until the later stages of cooking before seasoning the dish with salt. Remember: You can always add saltiness but you can’t remove it. Some producers (such as Oscar Mayer) now make a lower-sodium bacon that is quite good for bacon fans looking to reduce their sodium intake.

Crispy Polenta Bites with Sun-Dried Tomato Spread

 

In This Chapter

Bacon Swizzle Stick

Bacon Cheese Straws

Spiced Nuts with Bacon

Crispy Polenta Bites with Sun-Dried Tomato Spread

Bacon Jam

Caponata

Glazed Chipotle Meatballs

Poached Shrimp with Red Onions

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp with Scallions and Ginger

Clams Casino

Bacon and Tomato-Stuffed Artichokes

Caramelized Onion Tart with Goat Cheese and Lardons

Bacon and Butternut Squash Galette

To begin a meal you want something that both stimulates your appetite yet satisfies your hunger . . . at least a little bit. The accent here is on “a little bit” because you also want the deliciousness of the meal to come through. Bacon, with its deep flavor and its saltiness, crunch, and fat is the perfect seasoning for other ingredients. Many of the chefs we spoke with in the course of writing our book said they use bacon when they want an ingredient that subtly alters the flavor of a dish so that people will say, “I taste something here that’s different but I can’t name it. What is that secret flavor?”

The secret is quite often bacon. Why, for example, would you want to tinker with a classic recipe like Sicilian caponata as we did on
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? You’d think that dish made with olives, capers, and eggplant, would have flavor to spare. Our philosophy is there’s no such thing as too much flavor. Bacon makes this delicious recipe divine. As an accent to such old standbys as cheese straws, salted nuts, stuffed artichokes, and baked clams, bacon adds its own delectable dimension.

Some of these appetizers can also be served as light suppers or only need a tossed salad to become a complete dinner. Our Bacon and Butternut Squash Galette is a wonderful party appetizer, but if you are looking for a meal that is light and very tasty, you’ll be satisfied with a slice or two for lunch. Actually after a spin in the microwave it also makes a fine breakfast of leftovers. The Glazed Chipotle Meatballs or the Bacon and Tomato-Stuffed Artichokes are, likewise, good main courses, too.

Bacon is a crazy-good edible wrapper for foods like shrimp, scallops, chicken livers, stuffed dates, and asparagus. Bottom line, if you can mix it with bacon, you will improve it with bacon.