Spicy Brown Sugar Bacon

I saw a recipe on Zestuous for Brown Sugar-Chili Bacon and I knew that I had to make it.  She warned that if you already have an addiction to bacon she can't be held responsible if this recipe feeds your addiction and leaves you craving it morning, noon and night and I am going to second her on that.  This recipe was off-the-charts crazy good and surprisingly the person who couldn’t keep their fingers off of it was Maisie. 

Thankfully I knew not to follow the original recipe and only use a half pound of bacon and went whole hog for the full pound and it’s good that I did because Maisie ate a good half pound worth on her own. 

The recipe was so very easy, only three ingredients.

• thick sliced bacon
• brown sugar
• dark chili powder

That’s it!

Mix brown sugar and chili powder in a bowl.

Add the bacon and toss to coat.

Lay the bacon out on a foil lined baking sheet.  (Use foil, it makes clean-up so much easier!)

After 25 minutes in a 400F oven it looked like one hot mess!

Working in batches, very quickly place the bacon on paper towel to remove some of the extra grease and then remove the bacon from the paper towel before it sticks.

This was bacon candy.  Crispy, smoky, sweet and just a tiny bit spicy.  Not one healthy redeeming quality but off the charts crazy delicious.

Spicy Brown Sugar Bacon (recipe from here)

1 pound thick sliced bacon, slices cut in half
1 cup brown sugar
2 TBS dark chili powder

Preheat oven to 400F.  Mix the brown sugar and chili powder together in a large bowl.  Add the bacon and toss to mix.  Lay the bacon on a foil lined baking sheet and then bake for about 25 minutes.  Once the bacon looks like all the fat has been rendered out and it’s one hot bubbly mess remove from the oven.  Working quickly and in batches, drain the excess fat from the bacon on paper towels.  Quickly remove the bacon from the paper towels before it starts to stick.  As the bacon cools completely it will become crispy hard like candy.

Other than just eating this like candy, what do you do with it?  On Zestous she suggests to use it on a BLT, a grilled bacon cheese sandwich or crumble it up and toss it on a salad.  What did I do with the bacon that Maisie didn’t inhale?  That is coming in a future post so you’ll just have to come back and visit again.

Enjoy!