This last recipe post for Bacon Week is a little on the light side, for those of you who have been porking out all week (HA HA HA GET IT?).  Some tasty little curls for the munchy-times.

After a week of brownies, crème brûlée, and bacon-wrapped deliciousness, I thought it was time to toss a little bacon on a salad and let my arteries take a breath.  But rather than do a simple fry-and-crumble, I thought a fun “twist” on the garnish would be nice (HA HA HA GET IT??).  Cut to bacon curls!

I came upon this completely randomly from a site called “Not Martha“.  I followed her instructions more or less to the T, but in the in end, because I was using a much thicker cut of bacon, I baked mine significantly longer by 10 – 15 minutes.

Like Not Martha, I also experimented (just a wee bit) with different bacon widths; of my 4 slices, 2 I left as they were, and 2 I cut in half length-wise for skinnier curls.  Into the oven they went!

The curls came out….eh, pretty well.  The first problem I ran into was the one I mentioned earlier, that my bacon was significantly thicker so required a much longer baking time.  Maybe I should’ve moved the oven temperature from 325F to 350F?  I’m not sure.  Regardless, I ended up putting them back in the oven multiple times, eventually baking them for around 30 minutes instead of the suggested 15.  Even then the thick strips (as opposed to the skinny strips) weren’t in very stiff curls.

But you can’t really screw up bacon, can you?  Well, actually yes you can, but in this case, despite the fact that a few of them turned out less crispy than I’d like, I wound up with several good-looking curls that were ready to garnish my lunch.

For anyone looking to make these little curls for themselves, I’d definitely suggest slicing the bacon in half for the best curly-result, and if you’re using a thick-cut style of bacon, definitely bake for 30 minutes at 325F instead of 15.  But otherwise they’re really quite a snap to make, and make for a tasty addition to a salad (or more bacon, if that’s what you’d prefer).

And that’s the end of the recipes for Bacon Week!  Tomorrow is the culmination of all this grease, BaconFest for the local comedy theatre Dad’s Garage.  I’ll be sure to make a post on those festivities as soon as I recover.

Thanks to my blogging friends who participated in Bacon Week!  Make sure you check out Emily over at SpatialDrift and Emma at Of Agates and Madeleines.  You won’t be disappointed, I promise. ^_^

Bacon Curls

From Not Martha.