Deep-Fried Bacon: Deep-Fried Bacon Goes to Florida

Florida is a strange place. You’ve got a lot of sizeable contingents of different demographic groups - old Jews, African Americans, latinos, very southern Southerners, and cartoon mice. You’ve got tropical weather with flora and fauna to match, not to mention tasty seafood (mostly eaten at early bird specials). (If you’re from Florida, please, don’t take too much issue with my gross over-generalizations.) And, for one long weekend in February, Florida has Deep-Fried Bacon. Or, to be more precise, four good law school friends catching up plus one uncle, generously sharing his Palm Beach condo and his knowledge of the romantic lives of Florida retirees. Whatever you do, stay away from the Boca babes.

You know how these weekends go – a bit too much sun, a few drinks, a trip to the grocery store, and before you know it, you’ve decided to make the bacon explosion. A few weeks ago, when many of you fine readers sent the NY Times bacon explosion along, you probably thought it was funny. Let me tell you this: there is nothing funny about the bacon explosion. This is serious business. Allow me to explain.

First off, when was the last time any of you wove anything? Especially without a loom? And when was the last time any of you wove a 5x5 lattice of thick cut bacon strips? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question.

Understanding the bacon explosion means understanding that it is all about layers. Layers of flavor, layers of fat, and layers of mmm mmm goodness. The reason I loved Legos and K’Nex and Erector and Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys growing up was that it’s fun to build things, layer-by-layer, from the ground up. This is not so different. So, on top of the bacon weave, goes some bbq spice rub.

Then the next layer. Sausage. We chose hot Italian, although whatever sausage you’d like will do just fine. Either buy it uncased, or take it out of the casings, and make a nice even layer on top of the bacon weave. If I were at home, I would have ground my own, certainly, so (if there is a) next time, that what I’ll do.

Next: barbecue sauce, cooked and crumbled bacon, and more of the spice rub. We went with a hot barbecue sauce that was from somewhere down in Florida; I don’t remember the name. It was a little sweet, a little tangy, a little spicy, and complemented the rest of the explosion well.

And now’s when the madness begins to take form. layers are all well and good, but you’ve got to bring them together to truly make the bacon explosion greater than the sum of its parts. So, first, roll up the sausage layer on up, leaving the bacon weave flat and untouched for now. Do this carefully - you don’t want to break it, and you want to get it nice and tight. No air pockets. Smush in the sides and the seam to get a nice, smooth, enclosed cylinder of meat.

Then, roll it all up in the bacon weave.

Add some more rub. And then pop it in the oven.

Low and slow is the name of the game here. Ideally we would have had a smoker, and we could have smoked the bacon explosion, giving it some extra flavor, but alas, we only had an oven. It’s ok though! The oven’s not such a bad choice. 275 degrees for about an hour per inch of thickness (in our case, about 2½ hours) ought to do the trick.

One beautiful thing that happens: as it all cooks together, and the bacon and sausage fat render and mix with the spices, and pools on the baking sheet, you are making the pure essence of bacon explosion awesomeness. This stuff is good – dip your bread in, whatever – but powerful. Proceed with caution. One member of our party thought he should pour this stuff all over his meal. It’s like looking right at the sun. Really, I mean it - big mistake. Big, tasty, mistake.

After it’s out of the oven, slather on a bit more bbq sauce, to get a nice, burnished look.

Because we had a lot of time to wait for the explosion to cook, I decided to caramelize some onions on the stove top. A nice accompaniment to the star of the meal. The time while it’s cooking is also a perfect opportunity to drink a few glasses of whisky. Just a suggestion.

The finished product.

Afterwards, you may have some leftovers. Now, as one particularly astute reader has noticed, I love breakfast sandwiches. You could say they are my muse. The many ways to combine some sort of carbohydrate/breadstuff, some sort of protein, an egg, perhaps some cheese, maybe a sauce of some sort. Open-faced, closed-face, the possibilities are endless. But, in the end, a bacon, egg, and cheese or sausage, egg and cheese sandwich doesn’t need much tinkering.

Oh, wait a minute. Just wait a minute here. What about a bacon explosion, egg, and cheese sandwich. Madness? Beauty? Is this truly the ideal breakfast sandwich?