Caramelized Bacon

Several years ago, at my niece’s wedding reception, I was introduced to caramelized bacon. The reception was held at a beautiful country club, and as guests were mingling, the servers were offering plates of these delicious bites of bacon. Since then, I have been experimenting with recipes and cooking methods so we can enjoy this treat at home. Following is my recipe – which is pretty close to perfection (if you ask my kids):

You will need:
1 lb of bacon
1 cup of brown sugar

That’s all. As for kitchen “tools”, I use my broiler pan, a cooling rack, and some sort of flat plastic container with short sides.

I won’t lie to you - this can be a bit messy. So, I do a couple of things at the beginning to make the clean-up go quickly.

1. cover broiler drip pan with foil.
2. put foil or wax paper under a cooling rack (for drips)


OK let’s get started…. Preheat your oven to bake at 400. Pour the brown sugar into a flat container with sides. Cut the entire pound of bacon in half – just right down the middle.

Take each slice of bacon and press it into the brown sugar, covering each side. Then, lay the sugared bacon on the top rack of broiler pan – touching each other is fine.


Bake for about 16 minutes, flipping the slices over about halfway so they get about 8 minutes on each side. I prefer them very crispy, so I may watch closely and bake an extra few minutes. In this picture, I've been rotating some new ones onto the pan as others have been cooked and removed from the pan. The darker ones are ready to come off, but the others will need to cook longer.


Remove from broiler pan, and place each slice on baking rack while still hot. Let cool for about 10 to 15 minutes, then enjoy! You can also store in the refrigerator for up to a week, but they are best served at room temperature.