I've been having a craving for bacon, but had to wait for The Wife to go to Costco (about 34 days, but who's counting?) to pick me up some. I had a day rather light on chores for a change and I decided to go all out and try a bacon recipe from Serious Barbecue by Adam Perry Lang. He's had some great things in there including the best tri-tip steak you could possibly believe, but they are often complicated and labor intensive. However, today was a perfectly sunny, warm Texas day (water in the pool was 87 degrees at Noon) and so I just had to find excuses to cook outside.
Although this looked complicated, it actually wasn't too bad. On a normal day I wouldn't wait a couple hours for bacon, but I considered this a treat, not breakfast.
The idea was to coat the bacon in a mix of brown sugar, black pepper, red pepper flakes and crushed coriander seed.
The mix smelled great, as did the apple wood smoke, but argh! the Copper Coyote is not quite large enough to put a cookie sheet in. Bummer. So, I just spread out some foil and put them straight on the grill.
Results were outstanding. The mix slowly caramelizes over the bacon during the couple hours smoking. Although it wasn't crispy when I pulled it off, within a minute or two they kind of solidified when the sugar cooled and you got a nice firm piece of bacon. A little sweet, but also spicy from the red pepper and yet bacony. I think it is probably the first time The Wife actually seemed willing to physically push me out of the way to get more meat. I guess one could call that success ;-)Next time I think I'll turn the temp down a little. I burned (i.e. turned to charcoal) the pieces around the edge. I think I needed to adjust the temp since I didn't have a pan in there even though I was using the deflector plate for indirect heat. Oh well, till next time....
P.S. The cocktail of the day from The Wife was a ginger Mojito. Very, very refreshing on a hot day.
