Will It Be Sous Vide? Perfectly Adequate Bacon
Hello babes and grandmothers, and welcome to the smoky and salty edition ofWill It Sous Vide? , a weekly column where I do whatever you want with my immersion circulator.
Despite Karl’s claim that the bacon was “played out,” the salty pork jerky was the winner in our selectable session with something I wasn’t furious about. While I didn’t believe it was going to be bad bacon – I trust Grant Crilly and his gorgeous mustache – I just wasn’t sure if it was going to be the end – just as some have described it. (That sounded like a good way to prepare a whole bunch of this, though, as pointed out in the comments below.) Basically, I was intrigued on many levels, and just wanted to try it myself.
Sarah Palin Denier then piqued my interest by pointing out that there are probably some really good uses for sous-vide bacon beyond just eating it for breakfast:
To start with, I chose three different packs of bacon: a super cheap, thinly sliced pack; slightly more expensive, thicker, branded packaging at the grocery store; and super fancy, very thick bacon that came from the deli counter. All three were placed in a water bath set at 147 ℉ for 24 hours, and they all looked completely different when they got out:
Except for the thickest cut, there were some structural problems. This isn’t all that surprising when you consider that they were mostly in their own fat for a long period of time, but it was still sad to watch the bacon fall apart in my (tiny, child’s) hands.
I was able to carefully separate a few pieces from each package, but it took a little finesse. Once I took out a piece of each of the packaging, it was time to finish. It’s worth noting that preference plays a big role when it comes to getting the “right” bacon texture. Some (I) like their super crisp, some (my lost boyfriend) like them a little sluggish and chewy, and still others who like the texture of microwave-cooked bacon but I don’t want to talk about them.
Anyway. As suggested by ChefSteps and FoodLab , I started by firing only one side of each strip.
The two thinner pieces tasted like good crispy bacon, and the fatty pieces melted in the mouth, which was quite nice. They were good , but nothing that I had not tried before, and nothing that I could not achieve by frying.
However, the big boy was something else. As promised, there was a fresh (ish) side and a gentle side. The gentle side looked like this:
And the crispy side looked like this:
It was good- very good! – Catfish texture that was somewhere between pork belly and British Rasher bacon and a slight crunch on one side. I liked it, but it wasn’t as crispy as I like my bacon, and this is where that personal preference comes into play. If you are a fan of super crispy bacon, you shouldn’t waste time and energy to get this result. If, however, you like super-meaty, more chewy, almost ham-like bacon with little crispy patches, then this is definitely worth your time. So everything depends on you. Bacon is a very personal matter, and I’m not going to tell you that there is only one way to enjoy it.
Conveniently, the easiest way to slice up a large batch of sous vide is to simply put it all in the 375 ℉ oven for about half an hour. You get hot, somewhat crunchy meaty bacon to feed the spotless crowd, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
Aside from simple food, there is another sous vide use of bacon, and I am very happy about that.
If you’re a fan of bacon-wrapped foods, you’ve likely noticed that it’s hard to find a balance between bacon-wrapped items and the bacon itself. For fast-cooking seafood (such as shrimp), the bacon-wrapped dish will cook earlier than the bacon, leaving you with a tough, overcooked piece of seafood and a soft piece of bacon. This all changes with sous-vide bacon, as it is already cooked but still malleable ; he just needs a little color.
While thicker bacon is best for chewing, the thinner slices really shine here. However, you will want to separate them as soon as they come out of the water bath, when the slices have cooled and the fat has solidified, separating them will go from “delicate but doable” to “damn impossible.” Anyway, as soon as I wrapped the shrimp, I put them in the 400 degree oven for six minutes.
The shrimps were perfect, but the bacon was still a bit lethargic and dull, so I switched to another method.
Now this is how you wrap the bacon shrimp. Seeing that I had quite a bit of bacon fat at my disposal, I heated it up and cooked my sea creatures in pork for two minutes on one side and one minute on the other. The prawns were cooked to perfection and while the bacon was not terrific crunchy, it did crunch a little, making it the best bacon wrapped prawns I have ever eaten.
Then I raised the rate and switched to scallops.
It’s very unlikely that I recommend any kind of frying oil over the bacon fat, but you will need oil for these scallops. (It browns better and gives a better crust.) To make these babies, I heated the oil until it was browned and then fry each scallop for a minute and a half on each side.
The result is a super sweet, tender and juicy scallop wrapped in wonderfully crispy bacon. It is worth it in my opinion. (And I’m sure all of you wonderful geniuses could think of even more delicious things to wrap this bacon in.)
But there’s another gift that bacon can give us, and that’s really delicious candied foods. Unlike bacon for breakfast, I prefer the candied bacon to be thicker and leaner – I have a lot of them – which can cause the syrup to burn even before the bacon is fried. Once again, having the bacon already cooked solves this problem. All I had to do to get the sticky sweet-salty bacon treat was to coat it with brown sugar syrup (one glass of water for two cups of brown sugar) and cook at 375 ℉ for about twenty minutes, adding more syrup. and flip every five minutes. (Not only did the syrup not burn, but because the bacon was already cooked, there was no smoke from the fat.)
So, returning to the most delicious of the questions: will there be bacon sous vide?
Answer: Yes, yes, definitely, but “is it worth it” – you decide. Personally, I won’t be running my Anova overnight for a bacon breakfast, but from now on I will be making my candied bacon this way and it has changed my bacon food game forever.
If you are looking for a large batch of thick, flavorful bacon with a texture that sits somewhere between sautéed pork belly and ham, this cooking method is for you. But if you, like me, are a member of the Super Crispy Bacon Breakfast Club, you can probably skip this one. Unless you plan on wrapping the shrimp in bacon. Don’t miss it in this case.