Chocolate Covered Marinated Bacon

06 July 2011

Chocolate Covered Chili Bacon

Yeah, okay, so I may be slightly obsessed with this chili/garlic/ginger marinated bacon at the moment, what with having used it for a BLT and Burger recently and.. now, this. But I can't help it! It's delicious, and it worked very well indeed as a chocolate covered snack, too. That said, it wasn't perfect, and if I were to make a change I would probably up the Ginger and Chili content when using the marinade for this purpose - couldn't say by how much, but doubling it would probably be a good shout.

While I just had it at a chocolate snack on its own, which was yummy, I have thought of a couple of other uses as well. For instance, I reckon it could make a near-perfect condiment to a bowl of ice cream - both bacon and chocolate are pretty well known ice-cream condiments (at least in my world) and both chili and ginger ice cream is delicious, so I really don't see how it could possibly go wrong. I'll probably do it at some point in the future and let you know if it works or not. I also reckon it could work well in a sourdough sandwich with blue cheese - unfortunately I hate blue cheese, so I won't be trying that one, but it is supposed to go well with both chocolate and bacon. Finally, I love bacon as a cake decoration, and these bad boys could easily be broken up into smaller pieces and used to decorate chocolate muffins and rich chocolate cakes.

Now, it's recipe time.

You'll need:

2 slices of Chili/Ginger/Garlic marinated Bacon
8 squares of Dark chocolate (I used Cadbury Bournville)
1 pastry brush

Method:

1) Remember that you will need to prepare the bacon in advance (ideally the day before) for the marinade to work its magic. You will find the recipe by clicking the link in the ingredients list.

2) Fry the bacon up Proper Crispy style (click for method)

3) Meanwhile, put break up the chocolate into a glass bowl and place the bowl in a saucepan with a couple of cm of water in it. The bowl shouldn't touch the water. Place on the heat and let the steam from the water below melt the chocolate. If you want your chocolate to be nice and shiny, you will need to be a bit more anal and 'temper' it - there is a pretty decent guide on how to temper chocolate <- there. For the serious chocolate-nut, however, I would recommend picking up a copy of 'Adventures with Chocolate' by Paul Young. It's an awesome book in which Young shares both techniques and amazing, adventurous, recipes with budding chocolatiers.

4) Once the bacon is nice and crispy and the chocolate melted, grab your pastry brush and paint one side of the bacon with as much or little chocolate as you like. When you're done, letting the chocolate set before preparing the other side will make your life a heck of a lot easier- you can speed this up by popping it in the freezer for a minute or two.

5) Eat, enjoy.

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites