Gluttony 101

Just wanted to post this from our friends over at blog.ingamenow.com... they were moved to replicate this recipe and I just had topost this. 

The Woven Bacon Wrap: A Culinary Case Study

Possibly you have seen one of today's most popular viral blogs: a recipe for the best possible way to die by bacon. Well, in addition to sports and trash talk, we at IGN also love food (well, I do anyway). And I figure if I don't die having sex, eating bacon is the next best way to check out. 

I'm not one to balk at the opportunity for culinary experimentation. Hence, the writers at Holy Taco became my muse in constructing tonight's dinner. Here is a case study of how it went, and my thoughts on how it can be improved for future servings (trust me, it does NOT need much improvement).

1. Product selection and construction.

Remember, bacon is cured ham by definition–so you do not need a powerful cheese to assist this entree. It's simply a supporting ingredient. Get the largest container of shredded mild cheddar that's on sale.

A far more important factor is the bacon itself–I went with store-brand hickory smoked bacon with a medium thickness. The medium cut is the way to go. Thick cut will be harder to chew as it cools down, whereas a paper thin cut will likely break apart as it gets brittle.

Lastly, make sure your weave is as tight as you can make it. The bacon mat pictured above is probably the loosest you can get away with. N.B. the mat in the original Holy Taco post–there are no holes. This will be a factor as the bacon curls up on itself as it cooks. Also you don't want the cheese to slip through the holes.

2. Cooking Best Practices

Keep an old jar handy for grease drainage. I cooked 10 strips of bacon at the same time. After 5 minutes, the bacon was still pink but I drained off 9 tablespoons of grease.

A good time to siphon off grease is when you are ready to flip the mat. To flip it, I loosened it with a spatula, then covered the mat with a dinner plate face down. I put the grease jar in the kitchen sink and held the skillet over the jar, holding the bacon with the plate. Once the grease was drained I removed the skillet so that I was holding the bacon upside-down on the dinner plate, and easily slid it back onto the frying pan to cook the other side.

3. Cheese and extra ingredients

The amount of cheese you see here is just right for 10 strips of bacon. Eyeball the amount so that you're covering the center and barely spilling out onto the outer strips. Also, you do not need the entire mass of cheese to melt completely because the center will melt once you roll the mat.

I WILL be making this again. Possible ingredients for wrapping the center include link sausage and hash browns (I bought both for future servings). Also consider any ingredient that can go into an omelet–peppers, onions, mushrooms. However, make note that any ingredient that needs to be cooked should be done so ahead of time or concurrently in a separate skillet. Your window of time to roll the mat is only within the first few minutes after cooking, because the bacon will get brittle.

4. Serving suggestions

While the Holy Taco recipe called for slicing and eating, I prefer to eat mine as a bacon burrito. The lack of pictures of myself in this blog is due to the fact that I was working alone and getting grease all over everything (my camera is nice and slippery).

The PERFECT dessert to follow this rather heavy bacon wrap was vanilla yogurt. The wrap was meaty, fatty, with strong salty & spicy flavors. Following the strong flavors, the yogurt–without any additional fruit or nuts–was perfectly light and sweet to cleanse the palate, with the acidity to counteract the richly spiced meat. If not yogurt, the wrap would go well with a fruit juice or some fresh orange slices, not unlike a sweet riesling to counteract the effects of a white fish or pork chop.