The Bacon Experiment

Bacon is delicious. Candied bacon, even more delicious.  I had never eaten it before, but since first hearing about candied bacon a couple of years ago I had always wanted to make it.  So when my hubby started frying up some bacon last night for our Caesar salad I decided to finally try my hand at baking up some deliciousness.  I looked at a few different recipes for it, some saying to bake it on a cooling rack over top of a baking sheet, others saying to bake it right on the sheet.  I experimented with both ways.  I found that when I cooked it on the rack all the brown sugar just melted off with the bacon grease, but cooking it solely on the baking sheet wasn't letting it get crispy enough.  What I finally ended up doing was cooking it on the sheet, and then when it was nice and caramelized I transferred it onto some parchment paper to crisp it up.  It was so good, I ate a few pieces by themselves and then later on I crumbled it up to put on top of creme brulee ice cream along with real maple syrup.  Now that was an amazing dessert!

This is how I made my candied bacon:

Take as many pieces of bacon as you would like to candy and place on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Generously rub each bacon strip with brown sugar.  Place in a 350 degree oven and bake for 7 minutes.  Remove from oven and turn over bacon strips, rubbing brown sugar on the other side.  Bake for another 7 minutes.  Remove the bacon from the tinfoil and place on parchment paper, broil on high for about 2 minutes a side.  The bacon should be nice and sticky and brown.  Put the bacon a plate and as the sugar cools it will get nice and crispy.  Mmmmm, crispy.