Bourbon Brings The Best Flavor To Candied Bacon

Candied bacon is already a surefire way to upgrade your bacon beyond its simple, salty goodness. The classic combination of sweet and salty flavor notes makes this a standout dish, whether you choose to enjoy it on its own or as part of a larger meal, such as a BLT. Brown sugar tends to be the de facto coating when making candied bacon, with other ingredients like chili flakes lending their own interesting features. But a helping of some commonly available bourbon might turn out to be the secret ingredient you've been looking for.

Bourbon and bacon already prove to be an exemplary pairing, as evidenced by some next-level bourbon and bacon jam. But giving your bacon the boozy bourbon treatment prior to cooking can also prove fruitful. Glazing bacon is not an uncommon practice, and when you add bourbon into the mix, you allow the spirit's sweeter notes of caramel, butterscotch, and vanilla to shine. Mixed with the salty, umami bacon, your candied strips are sure to be bursting with a potent punch of flavor. 

So, if you've been wanting to experiment with new bacon ideas, or you simply have a somewhat underwhelming bourbon sitting on your shelf, bourbon-candied bacon may very well be the solution you've been looking for.

Bourbon, being largely a corn-based liquor and subject to strict regulations, may give you the impression that any one bottle is more or less the same as another. And while many bourbons are going to share similar flavor notes (those of oak, vanilla, and caramel, usually), this doesn't mean that all brands are interchangeable. Depending on which other grains are used in a particular bourbon's mash bill, one might have a much larger presence of a "spicy" note typically associated with rye. However, for the purposes of candied bacon, a sweeter-tasting bourbon is your best bet. 

Also, there's no need to break the bank on a bourbon to be used for cooking, and there is, in fact, a good number of "bottom shelf" bourbons that are well worth the money that you could use.

As far as actually implementing the bourbon into a candied bacon recipe, you won't have much luck simply coating your bacon strips with bourbon in hopes that it'll stick. Ideally, you'd make a more viscous bourbon syrup that you can use to glaze your bacon more effectively. Honey works well here, and also complements the notes already in bourbon. With a simple honey-bourbon syrup, your bacon is sure to be singing in no time.