Bacon Meets Sweet Baby Ray's For The Ultimate Spicy-Sweet Combo

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Breakfast sandwiches take on a whole new personality when you take an extra step with your bacon, and the secret isn't all that well-kept. You'll get way more flavor if you glaze your bacon before you build the sandwich. Generally, glazes include sweet ingredients like brown sugar to help with caramelization, creating candied bacon's signature sticky coating. But hot sauce lovers should reach for a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's Hot Sauce next time and add a spicy kick to their homemade breakfast sandwiches.

Sweet Baby Ray's Hot Sauce is primarily made of distilled vinegar, aged cayenne red peppers, and garlic — there isn't any sugar in sight. It's the last thing you would think of when you're picturing a bacon glaze. But combining this hot sauce with a little honey adds a whole layer of flavor to your favorite breakfast meat and gives each rasher that telltale lacquered look with a bit of an auburn shine and plenty of extra crunch. You can also spice up other standard sweet glazes like mustard and maple syrup with a few healthy dashes of this pepper-packed condiment.

Glaze your bacon with Sweet Baby Ray's in the same way you would use any other kind of glaze. One way is to oven-cook the bacon and then dunk it in a honey-hot sauce glaze after it's cooked. Other chefs add their glaze to the bacon before they pop it in the oven, especially when using brown sugar as a glaze, to add some extra crunch. Honey caramelizes at around 350 degrees Fahrenheit, so if you glaze your bacon with the Sweet Baby Ray's Hot Sauce-honey combo before oven-baking the bacon, you'll get pleasant notes of caramel.

If you want to add an extra kick of spicy goodness, mix some more hot sauce with mayonnaise for a sandwich spread, or make a three-ingredient sandwich sauce with sriracha. To balance out that spice, try adding creamy, cooling spreads like mashed avocado, aioli, or Greek yogurt. Then slice the whole sandwich into triangles and stack it up next to a creatively-spiced Bloody Mary, like one made with harissa or gochujang, for a brunch with some heat.