Now this…this recipe was interesting. I had no idea what to expect!
Of all the recipes I’d collected over the year for Bacon Week 2013, this was the one I was most curious about. I’ve made lots of things with bacon in them, things that you think to yourself “okay, I can see how this would work” or “alright, I understand how you could make that”, but this one had me very curious. Jam? I’d never made jam! With bacon in it? Well hot-damn, let’s give it a try!
Bacon Jaaaaaam
…Unfortunately for me, I screwed it up. Rats!
It started out great! I had all the required ingredients – bourbon, balsamic vinegar, whole-seed mustard (okay, so I cheated with partially-ground mustard); I had all the trimmings ready to go. I fried up the bacon, and started caramelizing the onions.
Early Caramelizing…
Later Caramelizing
Dutifully I followed the directions, halving as I went (because really, what was I going to do with 2 cups of bacon jam, let alone 4?). All pastures were green, and I was proud of myself. It took a good hour or so to get everything prepped before letting it simmer for another 2, so I tried to follow the directions precisely.
The the simmer-ation began!
SIMMERING
Looks good, right? Looks like I know what I’m doing, right? You can even see the little bubbles, slowly making the jam “gel” together. I was so proud of myself.
Then, despite the fact that I’d halved everything else in the recipe, I inexplicably did not halve the cooking time.
So after letting the goop cook for 2 hours I attempted move it out of the pan and into the food processor and realized, to my horror, that I’d let it burn, and burn pretty badly. I hadn’t noticed it on my occasional check-ins (to, presumably, ensure that it wasn’t burning) because everything was so dark, I didn’t notice the slightly-darker middle. It turns out that “slightly-darker” middle of the pan was actually fairly well crispified as opposed to pleasantly jam-like…I was pretty disappointed.
Despite this, I went ahead and completed the last step of the process, tossing it into the food processor and giving it a few good spins to chop it up a little bit. What I ended up with was something that looked halfway-decent, but when you stuck a spoon in it, became blaringly obvious it was hard and crispy instead of viscous. It was sort of like sticking your spoon into bowl of cereal. Le sigh!
So, it smelled good, and in small-tasting doses didn’t even taste too bad either, but it was clearly burnt and too crunchy. Part of me would really like to try this again, simply because I was so close to having a real, honest-to-goodness attempt at this jam. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl next year to see if I can do it better!
And so, Bacon Week continues! Remember to keep an eye on all the Bacon Week goodness on Facebook or G+, let me know if you make a bacon recipe of your own, and share the badge! Hopefully, your recipes will have better luck than this one. >.>
TEH NOMS.
Maple Bourbon Bacon Jam
Halved from Creative Culinary.
Mary Gezo
Formerly of both n00bcakes and !Blog, the two magically become one on Spatialdrift; expect some lazy baking and serious nerditude. Also, I love semicolons.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I would not intuitively think to halve the cooking time. I’m trying to wrap my brain around it and I can’t come up with an answer. Decreased time, yes, ah, I see now. But hmm.
I keep seeing your tweets about TNG. I have to say, I’m proud of you. Proud of you for loving it as much as I do. Your next step is to acquire a copy of the Trekker’s Guide to TNG book, which is fantastic – it covers every episode, details the plot, provides any omissions or discrepancies (Picard violated the Prime Directive……. again!), and gives two quiz questions per episode. It is so thrilling.
I’m just mad at myself for not keeping a better eye on it; Since the whole mixture of goop is sort of generically brown/black looking, I didn’t realize until it was too late that it was burning. I may try my hand at it again next year and see if I can do it right. It sounds like it should be tasty!
OMG I’ve been watching TNG like a beast for the last….month and a half? Honestly, what would I do without Netflix? I remember watching it as a kid with my family, but it’s nice re-watching it as an adult to appreciate different aspects. 😀 And has you a twitter handle? If so we should become twitter-frands.
Nope, no twitter for me. I don’t have a smart phone yet. We can settle for frand-frands?
I love TNG on netflix too, it’s so much more convenient than their bulky two-episode VHS tapes that were appealing, and yet also so hideous to look at, with all that gray and boxiness. I much prefer my sleek and sultry VHS Highlander boxed sets!