Bacon: It's for dessert

Yes, the secret's out: bacon and dessert can play well together. Quite well, actually.

Joel Stein, who pens a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times, has a piece in the current issue of Time entitled "What's Cooking? Bacon, for Dessert."

Stein's story includes five recipes for bacon desserts: Brioche Bread Pudding (from pastry chef Vera Tong of Dovetail in New York), Simplified Bacon Chocolate Crunch Bar (from chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Animal in Los Angeles), Maple Syrup Pudding (from Katrina Markoff, owner of Vosges Haut-Chocolat with boutiques in Chicago, New York and Las Vegas), Chocolate Creme with Caramelized Banana, Bacon and Burnt Milk Ice Cream (from pastry chef Ramon Perez of Sona in Los Angeles) and Chocolate Bread Pudding with Bacon Creme Anglaise (from chef Jerome Chang of Dessert Truck in New York). 

The photo above is a close-up of Shook and Dotolo's signature bacon crunch bar. Their restaurant, Animal, was reviewed just last summer by our own restaurant critic, S. Irene Virbila, who singled out the dessert in her write-up:

"As for the dudes' signature bacon chocolate crunch bar? I like it. The bacon stands in for a light sprinkling of salt, and it works."

Works for me too. These 5 desserts are Nos. 20-24 on my list of "1,001 things to do with bacon."

-- Noelle Carter

For the rest of the list, check here:

Bacon and doughnuts and cheeseburgers -- oh, my!

Orlando was busy over the holidays dreaming up enlightened uses for bacon.  One of his creations was truly inspired.  Check it out.

This, my friends, is a bacon-doughnut-cheeseburger.

Yup! A cheeseburger topped with crisp slices of bacon, sandwiched between a sliced Krispy Kreme doughnut. It's not the first time I've seen the bacon/doughnut pairing; bacon doughnuts are specialties at places including Nickel Diner in downtown Los Angeles, Dynamo Donut & Coffee in San Francisco and Voodoo Donuts up in Portland, Ore. But it is the first time I've seen the combination with a cheeseburger. (I especially like the composition of the burger: the glazed outer halves of the doughnut face inward toward the burger, keeping the fingers clean while the creation is shamelessly devoured. Very, very thoughtful.)

Well done, Orlando!  You've earned number No. 19 on my list of "1,001 things to do with bacon."

-- Noelle Carter

Check below for the rest of the list:

For those quiet moments... bacon bath salts

Long day?

Stressed?  Tired?

Need to relax?

How about a warm, quiet, bacon-scented bath....

Escape to bacon-land with No. 18 on my list of "1,001 things to do with bacon," courtesy of Jill Harness. The salts are easy to make, following Jill's step by step guide, requiring just a little Epsom salts, borax, liquid smoke and salt pork or bacon (salt pork renders more fat than bacon).

Of course, Jill also sells the salts pre-made (this may be safer for those of us who might eat the pork before the recipe's finished -- don't laugh, you know who you are).

Relax, then take a look at where the rest of the list stands:

Chicken-fried bacon, a.k.a. 'bacon porn'

Well, my heart skipped a beat when I got an e-mail from Jenn with a link to this video:

Imagine... chicken-fried bacon! Apparently, it's a specialty at Sodolak's Original Country Inn in Snook, Texas, as gloriously captured on video by Texas Country Reporter Bob Phillips.

Ian also sent an e-mail about a recipe for a similar dish from Maxim -- yes, Maxim magazine:

"We recently tried a recipe reported in Maxim called “Bacon Porn”. It was thick bacon dredged in chicken fried steak batter and deep fried. A simply amazing experience."

'Nuff said.  Gotta try it.  I'll report back. 

Oh, and in the meantime, this entry gets No. 17 on my list of "1,001 things to do with bacon."

-- Noelle Carter

Here's where the list stands....

Bacon: Put it on your popcorn

   

No. 16: Use bacon grease on your popcorn.

We are already hip to this one, but it definitely deserves a spot on our list of 1,001 things to do with bacon.

Thanks to Ann who e-mailed the suggestion: "Nothing better than popcorn popped in bacon grease -- an old family favorite from the 'popcorn capital' of Sac City IA."

-- Noelle Carter

Click below to see where our list stands so far ...

Top Times recipes of 2008: Roasted potato salad

 

To put it mildly, Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter has a thing for bacon.

This winter, in fact, she wrote a story confessing that one of her favorite Christmas gifts ever was a 6-pound variety pack of the stuff. "Now if that’s not true love, I don’t know what is," she wrote. She's also on a quest to compile a list of 1,001 things to do with bacon.

The simple fact is bacon does make almost everything taste better, a point Carter pushed to the maximum in the same story with a coffee cake studded with apples and bacon -- and bacon martinis.

Those were good, but this potato salad was even better, which is why it lands at No. 5 in our countdown of the L.A. Times' top recipes of the year.

This is far from a one-note recipe. Roasting the potatoes concentrates their earthy flavor and binding them and the bacon together with mayonnaise spiked with the sharp flavors of capers and red onion is the perfect contrast.

Photo credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Bacon: Cover it in chocolate, and more

I'm crazy about bacon. And I'm not alone. Suggestions keep pouring in for my quest to find 1,001 things to do with bacon -- thanks to everyone who took the time to write. Just when we think we've heard everything, something new comes along. Which brings us to....

No. 13: Cover it in chocolate.

Leslie Cooper, owner of LUCA Chocolate in North Carolina, sent us a small care package including chocolate-covered strips of bacon and bits of bacon covered in chocolate AND caramel.  We brought them out into the newsroom, and they were pretty much inhaled.

Clearly, bacon-loving minds think alike: Check out Leslie's blog posting on her inspiration. Covering bacon in chocolate was also suggested to us by John-Bryan Hopkins, who writes the Foodimentary101 blog. (If you follow him on Twitter, he delivers fun daily food facts).

For a few other suggestions, and the rest of the list, click below....

More bacon cocktails.... Yes!

Had the group over to watch the USC-UCLA game Saturday, and what did they want? Candied bacon martinis.

I was more than happy to oblige.

Now, while I'm always happy to fix a cocktail -- especially one garnished with candied bacon -- I must admit I started craving something more. Bacon is not a one-note food, magical creation that it is, and I felt a bit bad that I had only one alcoholic vehicle in which to showcase it... until now.

Got an e-mail from Kelly Hightower, Cocktails Examiner at Examiner.com. She did a series on bacon cocktails (how cool is that!) exploring a number of creative suggestions and recipes for cocktails and bacon. The list includes variations on the Bloody Mary, bourbon and coke, old-fashioned, multiple martinis and even a take on the tequila sunrise (she calls it a "Mexican Bacontini").

Haven't tested any of the recipes myself yet, but they sound delicious.  Guess I have my work cut out this weekend....

-- Noelle Carter

Click below for our running list of 1,001 things to do with bacon. (Kelly gets the No. 13 spot.)

Photo by Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Bacon: Make a pinata out of it

Who knew bacon was so controversial? Here's a peek at this week's batch of letters to the editor about our quest to find 1,001 things to do with bacon.

But before we get to that, let's add two more items to the list:

No. 11: Write letters about it

No. 12: Make a bacon pinata (more on that later)

And now, for some of those letters, and the rest of the list....

Bacon: Use it as currency

I was talking bacon (of all things) with my friend Cathleen over the weekend, and she told me she makes sure to bring along extra bacon every year when she goes to Burning Man. The festival works almost completely on a barter system, and bacon apparently tops the list of items including pancakes, Otter Pops and... tuna. (You'd have to be there). 

Cathleen thinks bacon's status has something to do with the heat at the festival, which is usually held in late summer, and participants' craving for salt (and a little tasty protein). She said bacon works so well that when she and some friends were waiting in a very, very long line for pancakes at this year's festival, she mentioned that she had bacon. Just like that, front of the line.

It makes me think. In these unsteady times, with the economy and our stomachs doing circus backflips, maybe we should turn to something a little more certain. And comforting. Like bacon.

So, the latest entry on the quest to find 1,001 things to do with bacon.

No. 10: Currency

-- Noelle Carter

Click below for the rest of the list: