Bacon Jam

I feel kind of silly posting about something as trendy as bacon, it's like I'm jumping on the bacon bandwagon. I love cured meat as much as the next person, but the omnipresence of bacon is kind of overwhelming. But, of course, I succumbed because bacon is so so delicious and after watching Kevin from Top Chef make some bacon jam a couple of weeks ago (and hearing the judges go crazy over it) I really couldn't help myself. I was intrigued. As a side note, after last year's somewhat lackluster season, I'm happy that Top Chef has some super talented contestants. I'm a big fan of the chubby hipster chef contingent (Eli and Kevin. And mostly just Kevin, but I think their friendship is cute).

This is definitely one of those recipes that is awesome in theory (i.e. before the reality of the nutritional value and the intricacies of preparation set in). So midway through the cooking process, when the massive quantity of fat was rendering from the bacon, I definitely had a "what have I done?!" moment. Also, I got the recipe from the Top Chef website and it was very confusing, particularly because there was conflicting info from a video prepared by Kevin on the same website. So, I definitely did some improvising and my version was just not doing what the recipe said it should be doing.

But oh my god. This is good.


I made a bacon jam sandwich with fontina, apple, and roasted red pepper on sourdough. Again, this was very good (and I got to use a cute sandwich maker my brother gave me).



Here it is out of the sandwich maker:



Yum! And now I'm off to the gym.

Bacon Jam
adapted from Top Chef here and here

Due to all the hot bacon fat this recipe is a bit dangerous. Not only to your arteries, but also as a burn risk, so be very, very careful. Also, due to the fact that I fiddled a bit with the cooking process on this recipe (not so much the ingredients) that the cooking times might be a bit imprecise.

Ingredients

• 1 lb bacon, cut into 2” X 1” X 1/2” pieces
• half of a yellow onion, sliced lengthwise
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 tsp hot sauce (or to taste)
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon butter, unsalted

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Place the uncooked bacon on a large (oven safe) saucepan. Over low to medium heat, cook the bacon on the stove top. Adjust the heat as necessary so that the fat begins to render but the bacon does not get crispy. After it looks like most of the fat has been rendered (it took me about 1o minutes) add in the sliced onions. Saute the onions with the bacon and bacon fat until they are a light golden color. Stir in the brown sugar, then add 1 cup of chicken stock.

Place the saucepan in the preheated oven and let it hang out there until the chicken stock reduces out. This step took me 35 minutes, though the original recipe says 5-15 minutes, so keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn.

Remove the saucepan from the oven and stir. Add the remaining cup of chicken broth and return to oven to reduce (again this step took me about 35 minutes -- but keep checking on it). When you remove the pan this time, the mixture should be a deep amber/almost brown color.

Season with salt, pepper and hot sauce. Let the mixture cool slightly before putting it in the blender or food processor. To blend, scoop out the bacon bits trying to minimize the amount of fat that goes into the blender. Start to blend the bacon and add fat to get the consistency you would like. Discard the remaining fat (or better yet, save it for another cooking project).

Return the mixture of the pan (removing any excess bacon fat), add the honey and cook over the stove top to darken the mixture ever so slightly. Remove from heat and add the butter (or skip this step). Again, you'll need to let this cool before you can enjoy it without risk of burning your tongue. It was great in a sandwich and would perhaps be even better on chocolate chip pancakes.