so during our holiday in Denmark, Bo and I decided to give the recipe for "bacon explosion" a go. You might remember my friend Bo from such wonderful experiments as "Toothpasta al Dente" and "Pate, the making of". I dunno what cooking blog he's reading, but for some reason he usually links me to the very same horrifying things that get posted here.
This is a picture report of our bacon-explosion.
starting with the weaving of the bacon (upside-down)
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009454.jpg)
a large chunk of beautiful bacon has been cut into little cubes and strips, which are fried. on the foreground you can see pieces of whitebread being dried/toasted, in order to powder them later on (as we didnt have a pack of readymade breadcrumbs)
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009455.jpg)
the filling. consisting of minced porkmeat, pork-sausage-meat (too bad we didnt get any pics of Bo squeezing it out of the sausage skin), eggs and (added after this pic) breadcrumbs and the fried bacon, possibly some black pepper, I'm not sure. and a lot of garlic, too.
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009456.jpg)
The finished bacon weave.
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009457.jpg)
Bo using his telekinetic mind powerz to spread the meat-goo evenly over the weave.
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009458.jpg)
On top of the layer of meat-goo, we put a layer of grated cheese. Then we rolled it into a .. horrendous roll of baconicity:
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009460.jpg)
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009462.jpg) (http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009461.jpg)
Knowing that this concoction was going to produce a LOT of fat and juices (even though we removed the fat rendered from frying the bacon cubes), we placed some quartered onions next to the bacon-explosion in the oven-dish, cause nothing is better than big pieces of onion soaked in pork fat. we also put an extra plate below the grill, so any overflowing drippings wouldn't mess up the oven floor.
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009467.jpg)
And then, we wait... (actually, Bo and I were busy pouring the juices back over the .. thing, every 15-20 minutes or so, to keep everything glistening with moisture and fat)
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009464.jpg) (http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009465.jpg) (http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009466.jpg)
in the left pic above, take a good look at the glass bowl on the table. we cut the pork skin (from the bacon) into small strips and FRIED THEM IN BACON FAT, it's eh something traditional. maybe you got it in the US too. anyway, they get crunchy and taste kind of good, but also still like pork skin, so we didn't really finish the bowl, but since we had the ingredients, I thought why the hell not.
this is the finished bacon explosion in all its glory (as you can see some of the cheese tried to escape):
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009468.jpg)
we do this shit for science:
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009470.jpg)
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009472.jpg)
ah right and in Denmark they sell the coolest stuff in the supermarket, namely packets of assorted beets and roots in all sorts of colours and varieties. Bo prepared these deliciously by cooking and stirfrying them:
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009473.jpg)
this is what a plate with a slice of bacon explosion looks like:
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009475.jpg) (http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009476.jpg)
or just a plate with a really large piece ..
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009477.jpg) (http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009478.jpg)
it was DE LI CIO US
juicy, flavourful, and too much, much too much too much too much.
closeups of the leftover. we were with 7 or 8 people, we couldnt finish it, and my friends turned temporarily muslim, refusing to eat pork for the rest of the week. Bo and I ate the rest of it the following days, cold slices of pork on toast, fucking delicious.
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009482.jpg)(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009483.jpg)(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009484.jpg)
THE END
(http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g213/05136/stamkamp2009/10032009485.jpg)
Wow. :mittens:
Your culinary audacity has raised the bar for those who dally with pork products!
Nigel's similar experiment came out without too much fat / grease, was this the case with yours to?
Quote from: Richter on March 23, 2009, 01:14:20 PM
Wow. :mittens:
Your culinary audacity has raised the bar for those who dally with pork products!
Nigel's similar experiment came out without too much fat / grease, was this the case with yours to?
yeah, kind of. as you can see, all the fat goes *out* of the actual roll, into (and partly out of) the oven dish, so the actual meat isn't super-fat at all.
i did pour a spoon or two of fat+juices over my slice, though, but that's personal preferences.
we noticed the same thing happening with our pate experiment, which showed that the pate actually *shrunk* because of the fat oozing out (this wasn't as apparent with the bacon explosion, because the pate was created with the bacon strips flat against the sides of a glass oven dish)
I also put the remaining fat + juices into a bowl in the fridge, in case we ... might need it for further cooking that week (we didn't, but it does taste kinda good on toast), it was a LOT, shame I had to throw it away (but i didn't feel like taking it with me 7 hours in the car back to the Netherlands).
We had the same issues with turbaconducken--the juices were syphoned off in the interest of not smoking out the whole house. I had a pan below to catch it, but then it would just start smoking awfully. So we just took the fat off every once in a while.
ETA: I second Richter's :mittens:--looks fantabulous!
It looks amazing! Yay!
I would sell my soul for one of these.
that looks delicious!
and I don't just mean that kickass yellow shirt
Yum! More Bacon treats to try. :)
:mittens:
Well, I came.