How to Deep Fryer Candied Maple Bacon
“Candied bacon” is a phrase that resembles a cheat code. In the early 2000s, it was so common that I almost got tired of seeing it on every menu I opened. Candied bacon made its way into French toasts, muffins, and cocktails, where it often distracted and darkened other ingredients, sometimes to the detriment of the dish. (A maple bacon donut is worthless if you lean too heavily on the bacon and forget to make a good donut.)
But even if you’ve experienced the Great Sugar-Bacon Glut in recent years, you can’t deny that strips of salted jerky pork topped with some kind of sweet syrup taste very good. Unless you are avoiding wholesales of sugar or pork, this is most likely a combination that you really like. Salt, fat, sugar, meat – everything is there. And just as candied bacon itself is a kind of cheat code, I found my own cheat code to make it in minutes.
I haven’t thought about candied bacon in years, much less ate it. It wasn’t until I got back from my hike and unpacked my leftover food to find a pack of pre-cooked shelf-stable bacon that I packaged with the intention of making breakfast every morning. (I didn’t.) “I bet it will get crispy very quickly in the deep fryer,” I thought. I was right – the bacon was ready before the fryer finished preheating – but it had a distinct fast food bacon vibe. (It was kind of crunchy and soft.)
Rather than eating it with a perfectly cooked egg, or even tossing it on a sandwich, I decided to spread maple syrup on the slightly weak strips and air-fry them. The result was candied bacon that could be eaten in a couple of minutes rather than an hour.
Need to use pre-cooked bacon to deep fry your candied bacon? No, but it’s certainly faster and a lot less greasy, which cuts down on waiting time and cleaning up and allows you to get down to the fun part – eating. To make the easiest candied bacon ever, you need:
- Pre-cooked bacon (You can find it at the grocery store without refrigeration. I found mine next to the bread).
- Maple syrup (you can also use a simple syrup of equal parts water and brown sugar).
Heat deep fryer to 400 ℉ and add as many strips of precooked bacon as one layer to the basket or baking sheet. Brush the top of each strip with maple syrup, cook for 30 seconds, then turn over and repeat on the other side.
Repeat this little song and dance, brushing, cooking and turning, until the bacon is as sweet and crisp as you like it. I smeared maple syrup twice on each side (and cooked for two minutes) and found it to be quite candied – sweet and salty, but still heavier on bacon than candy. Remove from the fryer and place on the wire rack for a minute to freeze the sugar. Repeat until sweet and savory are satiated or until you run out of bacon.