Along with our running tests of chocolate chip cookie recipes, we continue to tinker with our homemade bacon recipes (our main bacon recipe is here). This week we made what we call “breakfast bacon”, a sweeter, “porkier” bacon we thought would go well with traditional breakfast fare like eggs and pancakes.

For our breakfast bacon we made a cure with no garlic, less herbs and pepper and a LOT more sugar. In this cure we almost doubled the normal sugar, with ¼ cup of both dark brown sugar and grade B maple syrup. We also finished the bacon in the oven, rather than smoking it, with the hope that we would get the pork, sugar and salt as the dominant flavors.

How did the breakfast bacon experiment go? It went pretty well, the bacon was very tasty and we had a good pork belly to work with, so it was very attractive, meaty bacon (yes, I just described bacon as “attractive”). A number of us tasted, and all liked the bacon very much, as it was both sweeter and “porkier” than our savory bacon. The extra sugar also caramelized slightly on the bacon when cooked, which a few of us liked. Continue reading →