How to Make Bacon Candy Video
(Closed Captioning is available on this video)
Video Transcript:
Presenter:
Hey, everyone, this is Gary House with Cooking Everything Outdoors.
It’s a beautiful day and we’re making some bacon candy or candied bacon, however you want to name it, it is good.
Announcer:
Gary House with the outdoor cook Cooking Everything Outdoors show, I hope you try this at home.
Presenter:
So for those of you that haven’t read the article yet, what we’re going to be doing is taking bacon, which is a huge favourite, and you can use regular bacon bacon or turkey bacon or I would imagine tofu bacon.
Not that I’ve tried it.
Not that I’m going to try it.
But I would have to assume that that would work just every bit as well.
And what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be slow smoking the bacon.
You could certainly do this on a barbecue grill turned down low.
You could even do this in your oven.
And if you go on the internet, there are dozens of versions of this.
It’s not new.
You know, it’s been around for a little while.
But this is my version.
And, you know, I kick things down a notch and I make it super, super, simple and that’s what I’m doing here.
So we’re going to be smoking our bacon and we’re going to be putting a brown sugar concoction on top of it and we’re going to smoke it for about 2 to 3 hours.
And I’ll tell you what, it is good and it is popular.
So let me show you what we need to do this.
So first thing is, is that we’re using the Camp Chef Smoke Vault.
This is the 18 inch version.
Just got it from my sponsors Camp Chef, thank you very much, absolutely love it.
So we’ll be using this.
The other ingredients, to keep it all very, very, simple, we’ll be using bacon.
I get the thick cut bacon at the meat counter, okay?
You can go and buy packages of the stuff and it’s pretty well sliced so thin that it’s just going to shrivel up into a little dink about that big and, you know, maybe that’s a bite sized morsel, but I have always gone for the slab cut bacon.
I find it’s a lot cheaper too than buying the packaged stuff.
So I have a couple pounds here.
I’m going to make two versions of this.
I’m going to make a cocoa candy bacon and then I’m just going to make a regular candy bacon.
I find 50-50 ratio of people that some just love the cocoa and some just love the others, but I’m adding a kick of heat to each one.
The ingredients are basic and you can alter this and add things to it as you want.
First thing we’ll need is 6 tablespoons of dark brown sugar, not packed, not precise.
I’m also using 1 tablespoon of a very, very nice natural sugar crystal.
And I find this adds a little bit of extra, I don’t know, maybe a crunch in some spots if it doesn’t melt.
Got a little sugar crunch and it’s really, really, good.
1 tablespoon dark cocoa.
And a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, that’s for the cocoa version.
The other version is exactly the same minus the cocoa and I’ve doubled up the cayenne.
So we have a– excuse me– this is a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne.
The cocoa, I used an 1/8th teaspoon of cayenne, so I doubled it up in just the sugar based one.
So let’s mix all this together and then I’ll show you how we set the smoker up.
Prep, took me all of 5 minutes to prepare this and this is how easy it is.
You just take 6 tablespoons of brown sugar.
Your 1 tablespoon of raw sugar crystals.
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder and in this version, an 1/8th teaspoon of cayenne because we like a little kick.
Just going to blend this together.
No more difficult than that.
Now this you’ll probably have a little bit of leftover on it.
I did from my last batch that I made.
And what we’re going to be doing with the bacon is we’re going to be putting it on both sides.
And there’s a little process that I do with that and it’s not that difficult.
So break all these chunks up of brown sugar and get them blended really well.
A fork would probably just make it a little easier to do.
But, you know, we’ve got a spoon.
Spoons are good.
Spoons are your friend.
Okay, that’s mixed up fairly well.
Couple little chunks in there, but that’s not going to hurt because it’s all going to melt out on the bacon.
Let me show you the bacon I got.
Really nice stuff, full cut of bacon, nice, thick, gosh maybe, 1/4 inch could be little under that, but really good slab of bacon.
So that’s what we’re going to be using.
Let’s get the smoker fired up.
So let’s talk about our weapon of choice today.
This is the Camp Chef 18 inch Smoke Vault.
A lot of room in this.
It consists of just a few components.
Very, very, easy to assemble.
I have the heating burner down here.
I have a chip plate down here, water container here and then 3 trays.
You have room for 2 more trays in there if indeed you want to do that.
We’re going to be using a couple of trays.
I’m going to be using 2 for my candy bacon and then I’m going to cook a little extra bacon because I got another dish up, preparing later on.
So let’s get this going.
First thing I’m going to add some water to it.
Really you could add beer or any moisture type thing.
Apple sauce, apple sauce– nah, don’t do apple sauce– apple juice or a blend of that.
You know, add some beer just to get some extra flavour in there, but we’re going strictly with water.
I’m going to fill my water tray up.
And now I’m going to put my chips in there.
I’m using apple chips.
We can have this argument any day of the week that you want.
I’ve done dry chips.
I’ve done wet chips.
I lean more towards a combination of wet and dry.
For this particular one, I’m throwing in wet chips.
Works for me.
Whatever you want to do go for it.
Enough said.
And couple good size handfuls here.
And that just slides in directly over the burner.
I’ll take my trays out to start with.
We’ll be loading our bacon up on these.
And let’s get this fired up.
So I turn my tank on first and simply, one turn, turns it on.
So I’m turning mine all the way down to warm for right now.
Just going to heat up the chamber while I prepare my bacon.
Let’s start making our cocoa bacon candy first.
However many pieces you want to fit on your grate is entirely up to you.
And all I’m going to do is lay them out so I get a little bit of spacing in between.
We’ll probably get maybe 8 slices on here.
Maybe, we’ll see.
So we got 3, 6, can we do it?
Hmm, I’m going to go with 7.
Odd numbers are good.
Okay, on the tray spaced out nicely.
And all I do is just very carefully sprinkle a little ridge on my bacon.
Not more than that.
And that brown sugar and natural sugar crystals will melt and ooze on top of this bacon.
Don’t worry if it’s a little messy.
It’s not an exact science because if it was, then you know I’m not going to do it.
Keep mixing up in your bowl so that you get an equal amount of chunks in here.
Doesn’t have to be a mountain.
We’re only going to be using up half of our original mixture.
Maybe a little more than half.
And that’s it.
That’s batch number 1.
All I have to do now, put it in the smoker.
Okay, let me show you how I have this racked.
Chips already starting to smoke, my water pan, one layer of bacon, the other layer of bacon and my third layer of bacon untreated.
So I get my regular brown sugar candied bacon and my cocoa bacon.
You can actually see it starting to melt a little bit right now.
And what I want to do is get my temperature gauge up to about 250 degrees and I’m going to smoke this for roughly an hour to an hour and a half is what I’m looking at.
And then when that’s done we’re going to flip it over and then I’m going to put some more of that goodie on there.
And then we’re going to cook it another hour to hour and a half.
You’re going to love this.
So we’ve been cooking for about an hour, actually, it’s just a little over an hour.
250 degree’s been varying 225-250.
Adjusted the Camp Chef Smoke Vault to about medium.
Now I find that that with the temperature out here it’s given me what I want.
Chips have just about run out, so I got a good hour of smoke out of those handful and a half of chips.
Let’s take a look and see where we’re at.
I think it’s time to flip them.
Let’s do it.
Hot.
Don’t want to forget.
The handle is going to be hot.
Oh, yeah.
That looks nice.
Let’s get these out of here.
And this is not to make a giant mess.
We got to hang on to this and we’re just going to give them a nice flip.
All that candy sugar just stays on there.
Don’t know if you can see Bailey down below me doing what she does best, scavenge.
It looks delish.
Okay, so all I’m going to do now is sprinkle some more of the brown sugar mixture on each one, put them back in there for another hour, hour and a half.
Simple as that.
See you then.
As I’m preparing this and putting another coating of sugar on there, I wanted to point out one tip.
If you are using the Smoke Vault or any smoker, keep in mind that even within a small box, you know this is an 18 inch smoker, there are heat zones in there.
For this particular unit it’s hotter in the back than it is in the front.
And that certainly could be because the way I maybe have the water pan in there, or you know, who knows?
But I’m finding that the bacon to the back has cooked quicker than the bacon to the front.
So what am I going to do?
Obviously I’m just going to rotate it around so that the back is in the front and the front is in the back.
It’s as simple as that.
Now doesn’t that look beautiful?
That’s just regular bacon.
Sweet.
Well, we’ve been at this for a little over 2 hours and I’m thinking we’re just about done.
So that there is our cocoa candy bacon and you can still see, you know, some opportunity for it to melt a little bit, but I’m liking this.
I’m going to pull it.
Brown sugared version.
Looks beautiful.
And there’s our regular just smoked bacon.
That is a thing of beauty.
Well, that’s how we do bacon candy.
Brown sugar, cocoa, a little cayenne and just brown sugar.
And again I think you could really put whatever you want on these as long as it’s sweet.
You know, you could use honey, probably agave, probably just, you know, pure cane sugar.
Probably, all those things are good.
So I hope you enjoyed this.
I’ve got a lot more coming.
This is Gary House Cooking Everything Outdoors show.
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Thanks again.
We’ll see you soon.
