Home

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Stout Glazed Bacon

Bacon…how can you improve on such an amazing thing?  I could only think of one way to do that, use beer to coat it to make a caramelized candy glaze.  The thickness of stout provides a perfect base to do this.  With such a wide variety of stouts to choose from you can create a glaze with the flavor of your choice.  For this recipe we first tried it with the Weyerbacher TINY and after that success we tried it with Young’s Double Chocolate Stout.  Both types of glazed bacon were hands down amazing.  So in honor of Stout Day we bring you our recipe for Stout Glazed Bacon.

Tools:

Ingredients:
4 to 6 slices of Bacon
½ cup Stout Beer

Directions:
Place a 3 QT Saute Pan on the stove over medium heat.  Pour the stout beer of your choice into the pan and let it warm up until you start to see small bubbles.  The stout should be enough to cover the bottom of the pan.  Take each slice of bacon and lay it in the stout.  Let the bacon poach in the beer for ten minutes flipping once.  Turn up the heat to medium-high.  At this point you must keep a close eye on the bacon.    The stout beer will start to reduce, thicken, and caramelize around the bacon.  Once you start to see the stout clinging to the bacon you should flip it to make sure both sides are coated with the glaze.  When the bacon is cooked to the crispness of your liking remove to a paper towel and let drain for a moment.   After turning up the heat, the glazing process should take eight to ten minutes.

Notes: 
This recipe is a labor of love and will take a few times to master.  When the bacon is coated with the glaze it will look darker because you are using a stout.  This makes it easy to think that you might have burnt the bacon.  One test to determine the doneness of the bacon is to use tongs to pick up a piece of the glazed bacon and see if it has any give.  If it does not wiggle then it is crispy.  I, on the other hand, enjoy my bacon to be chewier more like the consistency of jerky. This tip should help you use your judgment on when to remove the bacon from the pan.