Bacon Part 2

See all that bacon on the left?

And now on to the Beer Candied Bacon.  Goodness gracious this was amazing.  A little intense to make (as in I singed my fingertips in the bacon flipping process), but I'll try to impart my wisdom here as to how to make it a bit easier.  Definitely try to have the proper supplies.  I didn't have a basting brush, so I was just brushing beer and brown sugar directly onto the bacon with my hands.  This is probably where most of the burns came from.

Here's what you'll need:


2 pounds of Bacon (at least)
3/4 C Beer (darker is better, more if you do more bacon)
1 C Brown Sugar (more if you do more bacon)

1. Mix the brown sugar and beer together to form a light syrup.  Preheat oven to 425 Degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Set this up: shallow baking pan, covered in foil, with a cooling rack set on top of the foil.  Lay the bacon slices out on the racks.  Brush the bacon with the beer/sugar mixture, flip and brush the other side.

3. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes.  Remove and brush with beer/sugar, flip and brush the other side, bake for another 10 minutes.  (The other side should be up this time while baking.)  Go through this process until you've used up all the beer/sugar and/or the bacon is crispy enough to your liking.

4. Remove from oven and let cool before serving.  You can refrigerate overnight covered in foil or plastic wrap and serve the next day as well.

So, my thoughts on this are...delicious but difficult.  I know if I had a basting or pastry brush it would have been easier, but I'm still trying to think of better ways to do this.  Perhaps you could make the beer/sugar mixture in another shallow pan, and dip the bacon in it instead of brushing it?  Perhaps using some nonstick spray on the racks would help with the flipping of the bacon, preventing it from sticking so much?  You would have to spray the rack each time you flipped the bacon.  Maybe combine these two ideas...remove the bacon and put it in the sugar/beer pan, swoosh it around a bit to coat both sides, spray the rack, put the bacon back on the rack, and cook.

Regardless, whatever the process of making these, it's worth it.  I wanted to eat all of the candied bacon myself, but I resisted.  My roommate paired it with a brownie I also made, and was in heaven.  I guess bacon+beer+sugar+dark chocolate=heaven.  No argument here.

Not my picture.  Laura from
Tide and Thyme's picture.
Also stole the recipe from her,
with some slight adjustments.

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