The Bacon Recipe That's Missing From Your Life
We thought we knew all there was to know about cooking bacon. On a stovetop. In an oven. On a grill. Until now, we didn't realize there was yet another way to cook nature's gift to meat lovers, but there is!
As with many things deep fried and delectable, this bacon hack hails from the South and should probably come with its own health warning (but everything in moderation, right?). It involves dredging strips of bacon in seasoned flour, bathing them in a mixture of egg and milk, then giving the coated bacon one more dusting of seasoned flour, before deep frying it in a skillet full of oil. If you're guessing that this sounds a lot like the recipe for making chicken-fried steak, you'd be right: Miss in the Kitchen calls this chicken-fried bacon, and she usually serves it up with gravy made of bacon drippings or includes it an elevated BLT.
Yes, chicken-fried bacon is a thing
The recipe originated at Sodolak's Original Country Inn in Snook, Texas. Owner Frank Sodolak tells Texas Country Reporter that he came up with the idea, because he simply wanted to know what would happen if he put chicken-fried batter on bacon. However, Iron Chef Showdown champion David Bancroft is the person who put the treat on the culinary map for foodies everywhere. Bancroft, also a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for best chef in the South, was putting together a version of it for a staff meal in his restaurant Acre in Auburn, Alabama. A photo of that staff meal made it onto Instagram, and things took off from there for the OTT bacon dish (via AL.com).
As we mentioned, it's not the healthiest of choices: Three thin slices of bacon without the chicken fried batter packs 161 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 581 milligrams of sodium, not to mention what spending time in a deep fryer or cast iron skillet full of oil will do to this golden treat. Even Bancroft admits that the dish may be high on flavor, but it's also high on other stuff, too. "Yeah, it definitely can't be good for you," Bancroft tells AL.com "It's a good thing it's only two pieces of bacon. So it's like, 'Umm, that was good; I'm glad there's not more.'"
Even so, if you're looking for a new dish to impress your friends at your next brunch, why not give it a shot?