Here at Barbary Brix, we love some variety in our flavors. Long time fans will recognize that we’ve offered our own bacon + maple caramels from time to time…. That said, when we get a chance to try some new exciting ingredients, we’re all over it. This is doubly so when we can get our hands on some responsibly raised, heritage breed bacon that comes from people dedicated to doing things right and keeping things local.
So when we heard from a friend that they could get us in contact with Tellurian to sample some of their Maialino Bacon, we immediately said, “YUP!”
If you’re looking for the short version: The Maialino Bacon combined with our base caramel recipe = scrumptious culinary bliss.
What follows is more about the bacon and how we prepped it than the caramels. But fear not, there’s plenty of carameley goodness to come at the end. It won’t be the wordiest article, but we think that you’ll appreciate it.
For the record, we cooked down 1lb. of this amazing bacon and added it to about 4lbs. of our basic caramel recipe. We didn’t add any maple, vanilla or anything else in order to let the true flavor of this amazing porcine product shine through.
We figured that this was a good post for tons of bacon pics, so if you’re a fan of the fine swine, keep reading.
Check out the marbling on this bacon!
Still in the package, almost taunting you with it's deliciousness!
So, once we get it out of the package, it’s time to cut it up into even sized pieces. While this isn’t an exact science, you can get pretty close:
Slice those bad boys down the center the long way to set you up for an easier time cutting into smaller pieces in the next step.
Now it’s time to give your chopping skills a test. Try and cut the short way as evenly as possible.
Give it a nice even chop the short way!
About 1/8″ gives the best results we’ve seen, without being too difficult on the knife skills front. Don’t worry if there’s not exactly the same size, just get them as close as you can. You’ll end up with a glorious pile of bacon bits that resembles something like this:
Boom: uncooked bacon bits!
Now, into the pan on a medium heat. One word of warning, this is going to take a good 20 minutes or so, depending on your stove… So error on the side of the heat being a little too low so you don’t accidentally scorch your precious bacon!
This is where the magic starts to happen! Careful to not have the heat up too high!
Let it cook for a while… You’re going to see it start to sweat out and get a bit of a sheen to it:
Keep cooking!
You'll start to see more and more of the fat render. Keep an eye on it! If there is bacon grease popping out of the pan aggressively, turn the heat down a bit.
Getting closer!
Getting there! When you see it "foam" up a bit, you're just a couple of minutes away.
At this point, make sure you’re giving it a slow, steady stir to make sure that all the warm, rendered pork fat is evenly cooking the bacon bits:
Keep stirring to ensure an even cooking!
Okay, time to stop that cooking by pouring the whole mix through a strainer. Make sure to save the bacon fat for other treats! In this case, we had a wire strainer over a smaller pot.
Pour it out, make sure to save the flavor packed bacon grease!
Let it drain for a minute or so, then tap the side of the strainer a few times to knock any remaining grease off the bottom and you should be left with something as glorious as this:
Resist the temptation to grab a handful of these: 1) Because you want all that bacon to make it in the caramel and 2) They're still hot as hell!
Next to make sure that we weren’t adding too much fat to our final caramel product, we did a quick blotting on a towel to get a little more of the grease off.
The bacon after a quick "wicking of the grease" on a towel
Now it’s time to add the bacon to some caramel that’s just getting finished cooking.
Meet your new home, little buddies!
After a quick stir to ensure even distribution of the bacon bits, time to pour it out!
Pour that goodness!
Put on some Yacht Rock, cause this stuff is smoooth!
Now comes the hard part. You have to wait for the caramel to cool down to room temperature. Don’t worry it will be worth the wait. Once it’s “cool enough”, cut them up into whatever size piece you like. We go for “squarish”.
Little squares of heaven, waiting to get consumed...err... wrapped up.
Now, just wrap them up for later since you won’t be able to eat the whole pan in one go (trust us, not worth it no matter how good idea it seems at the time).
Resist the temptation to eat them here. Your friends and family will thank you.
Just kidding, now’s the time to eat away! But any you do manage to save for a bit will garner you some serious brownie points with your friends and family.
Okay, enough out of us. I’d recommend heading down to the store, getting your hands on some caramel making ingredients and seeing if you can’t get your hands on Tellurian Bacon to recreate the magic!
-BBxTweet
