3 Game-Changing Bacon Recipes For Under $3

Hi, I'm Adrienne Cheatham.

[banner whooshes] [light upbeat music]

And today I have been tasked

with making three delicious

and budget-friendly meals, highlighting bacon.

[laughs] Thanks, you guys. [bacon crunches]

Oh yeah, I'll take all of 'em. [laughs]

I'll be making breakfast, lunch, and dinner

for under $3 a plate,

using bacon in different applications.

[logo spins loudly]

(空气whooshes] Bacon is like the gift

that keeps on giving.

You can get the fat from it, the meat,

you can just extract the flavor.

Today I'm just gonna be using standard everyday bacon,

chopping it up, infusing the flavor,

using the fat separately,

and just kinda playing with it

in ways that we don't normally think of using bacon.

First up, we're making breakfast.

[light whimsical music]

For breakfast, I'm making bacon cinnamon rolls.

So most people don't think about bacon

when they think of cinnamon rolls,

but it's actually the perfect balance

for all that sweetness.

It's kinda like candy bacon, it's delicious.

I need to start with the bacon.

That's gonna give me what I need

for the filling and the icing.

So when this cooks, it's gonna render out a ton of fat,

and we're gonna be left with these crispy little bits,

but we're using both, bits and fat,

in the icing as well as the filling.

[bacon sizzles]

Oh, it's like the sound of joy.

I'm gonna cook it all the way

until the bacon is like toasty, deep brown,

and all the fat is rendered out.

Ooh, look how golden it is.

We're going to just transfer some of it

to a bowl to use for our filling.

I wanna get a little more fat in my bowl.

I'm just gonna leave about a tablespoon worth

of bacon bits and fat in the pan.

That is gonna be used for our icing.

For my filling, all I'm gonna do is stir these together.

The butter is lightly softened,

so it's not straight out of the refrigerator,

but the extra heat from the bacon is gonna soften it

so they can kinda melt and combine together.

So we've replaced some of the butter

that you would use in a normal recipe, with bacon fat.

So it's about the same amount of fat

that you would get anyway.

Cinnamon, allspice, brown sugar has molasses,

so it gives you a little bit deeper flavor.

And normally we would add a pinch of salt

to any dessert you're making or anything sweet.

But in this case we have our bacon,

which provides some of that saltiness.

Great, filling is done.

We're not making a typical croissant dough that has yeast.

Our dough is kind of like a biscuit dough.

Because it's so much easier,

we are just gonna use self-rising flour.

It already has the leavening agent, baking powder,

sifted into the flour itself.

If you don't have self-rising flour,

you can use, for every one cup of flour,

like a teaspoon of baking powder, and you're good.

And we're gonna grate our frozen butter right in.

This technique of grating the butter

is a way to keep your dough light and fluffy.

You get beautiful, even pieces of butter

throughout your flour.

Butter is a mixture of fat and water,

so when you bake it,

the fat will absorb into the dough,

和水会蒸发,抬起你的面团。

So you'll have a nice flaky crust.

Gonna add milk.

You do wanna work pretty fast

so that you don't heat up your butter and it doesn't melt.

Add a pinch of salt,

and by all means you can use a spatula for this.

I'm a little handsy,

and I also get a real feel for the dough this way.

I know if it needs a pinch more flour

or a splash more milk.

I'm looking for a kind of shaggy dough,

but one that holds together when it's pressed.

Okay, we're just coming together.

I'm just gonna lightly dust the surface with flour,

and the dough is not fully compressed.

Don't worry about that.

You can press it together on the board.

So I'm just forming a rough rectangle,

and then I'm just gonna roll it out.

I do wanna lightly dust my roller,

but I wanna go about 12 by 16,

so it's gonna get pretty thin.

You do wanna make sure it's even thickness.

You don't wanna have like a thick side

and like super thin,

just because it won't roll evenly.

Bam, our dough is done, son.

Okay, so now we're just gonna spread our little

brown sugar bacon filling.

I'm not gonna go all the way to the rolling edges,

just because I want them to seal closed.

It smells so freaking good.

You don't wanna roll it too tight,

but you wanna make sure that it rests on the seam,

because we want that to seal it kinda closed.

Don't worry if the edges are not even.

I'm gonna use a very sharp knife.

You can use a serrated.

I just don't wanna pinch through the dough

so that the layers stick together.

Look at that.

Oh my god, it's so pretty.

I have my cake pan, and some softened butter.

I'm just gonna rub the inside,

so that it doesn't stick.

The little uneven edges, guess what?

That's gonna go down, so it doesn't matter.

I'm gonna stick that guy in the middle,

and we're gonna build out from there.

For all of the seams,

you wanna make sure that they're facing in,

because your cinnamon rolls are gonna expand in the oven,

and then those seams will stay closed,

because they'll expand and touch each other

and hold each other together.

Our rolls are ready to go in the oven.

It's set at 450.

We'll bake 'em for about 20 minutes,

与此同时,让我们的糖衣。

All right, so do you remember that pan of bacon and fat

that we left on the side?

Well, it's back.

The quickest and coolest way to make icing

is just with powdered sugar.

And you need a little fat to give it body.

So we have our bacon fat,

and a little bit of butter.

You don't want it to be hot,

but you do want the butter to be fully melted.

[whisk scrapes]

So in the pan we left behind about one tablespoon

of bacon bits and fat.

I'm just gonna scrape with the whisk

on the bottom of the pan.

[whisk scrapes] Loosen up some of that bacon

that got stuck.

That is why we use stainless steel for this.

And we're just gonna dust our powdered sugar

right into the pan.

Whisk that together.

You see it starting to get like kinda clumpy,

but it's not quite loose yet.

We're gonna add a little bit of milk.

Just add it like a splash at a time,

until you just get the consistency that you want.

We want our icing to be spreadable,

but not so loose that it just runs right off

of the cinnamon rolls.

And this can keep in the refrigerator for a while.

You don't have to use it right away.

It's time to put all this together.

I'm gonna go grab the cinnamon rolls.

Beautiful, my cinnamon rolls are baked.

They're lightly golden brown.

They're baked all the way through.

You do wanna let these cool for a moment,

because if you put the icing right on,

it'll just melt off.

So it's best to let them come just above room temperature.

You wanna spread the love evenly now.

Don't let your cinnamon rolls get jealous,

and it just kinda soaks in and oozes

into all those little crevices on top,

all that bacon flavor, yes.

I'm not like a big dessert person,

and that's why I love these so much,

because they're not super sweet.

They're just sweet enough to like really wake you up

and get you going for the day.

Here we have eight bacon cinnamon rolls for $5.19,

coming out to

收银机丁氏每部分1.30美元。

Oh my god, oh my god,

you have to eat this.

Well, first you have to make it.

You get this nice flaky quality with some crispy edges.

You get like that warm flavor

from the cinnamon and allspice,

balanced out with that bacon.

There aren't a lotta meals

that you can make for $1.30, that are this good.

[light whimsical music]

Okay, soup time.

We are making a BLT-inspired soup.

[banner whooshes]

So that is basically a beautiful bright green soup

that's kind of gonna act as our lettuce component.

And then we have a garnish

of like little BLT sandwiches

that are kind of croutons skewered with tomato.

First, we're going to peel and slice our onion.

Our soup is getting pureed,

so none of our knife work really has to be that precise.

[knife chops] It just has to be evenly cut

so that everything cooks at the same rate.

Celery, sliced garlic.

These cherry tomatoes, these are pretty big,

so I'm just slicing them into three.

These are for the garnish for later.

These are gonna sit and macerate,

so we're gonna put a little bit of salt and pepper on them.

So now I'm just gonna get the bacon cooking,

'cause we need the actual bacon for our garnish,

but we also need the fat to build our soup.

The pan is just barely heating up.

For rendering fat, you don't wanna start

with a super hot pan,

because you'll start to brown and crisp

before you've gotten the fat like slowly melted off.

While our bacon is cooking,

I'm just gonna spread some mayonnaise

on our bread here, instead of butter.

Mayonnaise is like pure fat,

so you can use that to toast your sandwich as well.

So we're gonna put these pieces of cooked bacon

directly onto the bread, so the fat soaks in there.

Don't worry, the soup is light.

It'll balance it out, just trust me.

Some of this excess fat, I'm gonna pour off,

'cause we wanna save it.

We're gonna finish our garnish

and build our soup all in the same pan.

So we're not using a ton of equipment,

and we keep all the flavor right here,

where we're building our soup.

I removed this pan from the heat

just so it's not burning the bread.

The mayonnaise first melts,

and then the fat separates,

and then it just toasts everything up, just like butter.

Getting nice, light brown color.

Think of these as like croutons in development.

We have our fond from the bacon,

all the protein that gets stuck

to the bottom of the pan when you're cooking it.

The fat that we poured off

is gonna go right back into the pan.

Also, going to add a little bit of mayonnaise to the pan.

It's just like cooking with butter.

We're gonna put our onions in,

our celery, and our garlic.

All of these aromatics

are gonna cook on medium low heat, in our fat,

and sweat down until they're translucent.

So it's gonna slowly caramelize those flavors.

我们会开发很多复杂性with this,

and it's gonna make a great base for a soup.

When I've worked in restaurants,

soup is one of the foundational stations

where you really get to see how good a cook somebody is,

by assigning them soup.

You have to know exactly

when to capture those flavors at their peak,

to combine them for soup.

So for deglazing, we're gonna use white wine.

It doesn't have to be good wine.

Matter of fact, if you have a really good wine,

don't cook with it.

Save it for drinking.

And we're gonna scrape up all those bits of bacon protein

that got stuck to the bottom of the pan.

So the wine is gonna do a lotta things here.

It's gonna emulsify a little bit into that fat,

and thicken up a little bit,

and it's gonna add acidity and brightness

to our soup as it reduces.

I'm adding the bay leaf now.

It provides this like nice aromatic back note

that kinda supports everything else.

We let our wine reduce by a little bit more than half.

You want it to be kinda sticky looking,

but not fully dry yet.

I'm gonna add about four cups of water.

Now we're getting closer to soup land.

So I'm turning the heat all the way to high,

and we're just gonna let it boil and reduce

by about one third of the volume.

Reducing concentrates the flavor.

It gives all the flavor

of all the aromatics and the liquid

a time to really meld and blend together.

I'm gonna turn the heat off and throw in some fresh parsley.

Everything is getting pureed,

so I'm throwing the parsley in whole, stems and all,

and let that soup cool down.

So you always wanna take out your bay leaf before you puree.

It is time to blend. [liquid splashes]

Also gonna add our spinach.

So here I'm using frozen spinach.

You can do this with fresh,

but frozen spinach is less expensive,

and it's already parcooked.

I'm not thawing it completely though, very important.

I want it to be partially frozen,

because it's gonna cool all of this down

so that the color stays bright and green.

So you always wanna start on low speed,

and then gradually bring it up.

You don't wanna start on high speed,

because the speed of the initial twirl of the blades

is gonna shoot all of your liquid and ingredients upward.

[blender hums] We wanna go really fine.

We want this to be a nice, smooth,

bright green homogenous soup.

Mm, very nice.

We could use a little bit more salt though,

and maybe a little bit of black pepper.

We're also gonna add a little bit more mayonnaise.

This addition of mayonnaise

is gonna add as much acidity as it does flavor,

because we're not cooking it out

and melting that fat.

So it's also gonna give us a little bit more body.

It's gonna whip that soup so it's nice,

and like rich and smooth. [mixer humming]

All right, mm, mm.

As simple as these ingredients are,

if you cook them properly and treat them well,

they will be frickin' delicious.

But I'm gonna put it back in the pot

so I can warm it up while I make my garnish.

I'm just chopping a little extra parsley for garnish on top.

So now I'm gonna cut our bacon sandwiches

into about nine pieces.

Eat your crust, like don't waste your bread.

Skewer time.

So these are the macerated tomatoes from earlier.

You know, it's like it's your world.

This is totally customizable.

Okay, one more for me to eat.

So you could totally have it chilled in the summertime,

or heat it up in the winter.

Totally up to you, and it'll be delicious year-round.

So I have some extra tomatoes from our skewers.

And you look all fancy when you do the drizzle, right?

So here we have four portions

of our BLT-inspired soup and skewers,

which comes out to $8.08,

making that $2.02 per portion. [cash register dings]

Mm, mm.

Mm, that is lovely.

It's got a lotta depth of flavor from the aromatics,

but it's still bright and fresh and green.

And it makes me feel really healthy,

in spite of eating a bacon sandwich.

This is like a perfect bite right here.

[light whimsical music]

For our final dish, we're gonna be making bacon bolognese.

Bolognese is a classic meat stew,

usually using beef, pork and veal.

But in our version, we're gonna swap out

all of those different types of meat, for bacon.

We're also gonna use mushrooms to bulk up the sauce

in place of the meat.

So I've popped the bacon in the freezer

for about an hour just to get it super cold.

Once this fat is warm or room temperature,

it can get caught in the blades.

This is a grinder attachment for the KitchenAid.

If you don't have one of these,

you can just chop your bacon finely by hand,

or ask someone at your local butcher

to grind the bacon for you.

Swapping bacon in our bolognese

allows us to impart robust rich flavor

without using so much meat,

and that's also cost-effective.

So there we have our nicely ground bacon.

I have mushrooms and I have classic mirepoix,

which is onions, carrots, and celery,

plus a couple cloves of garlic, because it's bolognese.

You could totally do this in a food processor.

[knife chops]

Just be careful, 'cause you don't wanna

break them down too finely.

Mushrooms have a lot of water content.

This'll cook down to about a quarter

of what it looks like on the board.

You're left with a lot of like earthy,

meaty vegetable flavor,

that'll give our dish a lot of umami.

And this is all gonna get cooked down,

so don't worry about it being completely uniform.

I do like to cut my carrot a little bit smaller

than the onion and celery.

They're a little firmer of a vegetable.

They take longer to break down,

and celery. [knife dices]

So time to make our bolognese.

First thing we're gonna do is cook our ground bacon.

[bacon sizzles]

Grinding the bacon helps the fat render out more evenly.

You really wanna brown it up,

because you're adding more flavor by caramelizing it

and cooking it a little bit darker,

but it can go from zero

to this is nothing but bacon in two seconds,

if you don't balance it out with enough other ingredients.

So I'm straining out most of the fat.

Again, we can add the fat back later

into the sauce if we want more bacon flavor,

but once it's in there we can't really take it out.

Now we're gonna add our chopped mushrooms.

The mushrooms are gonna release

a lot of liquid as they cook.

So be patient, let them do their thing.

I have a couple tablespoons of butter here

that I'm gonna add in.

I'm gonna season a little bit here.

I'm gonna turn the heat back up,

and we're gonna let these mushrooms cook.

The mushrooms soaked up all the bacon fat

and butter from before,

so I'm just gonna add a little bit back in.

You can see the color is darkening.

They're starting to caramelize,

so I'm gonna add our mirepoix and garlic.

So the mushrooms are really important

to brown and caramelize,

and you have to do that before you add your mirepoix.

Otherwise they'll stay moist.

I'm adding bacon fat again at different stages,

just enough so that they're nicely greased up for cooking.

This is gonna cook down for about 10 minutes,

just until the vegetables are nice and soft.

There's no crunch left in the vegetables,

so we've developed that sweet flavor that we want,

before we stop the cooking at this stage.

So we're not gonna get any more sweating or caramelization

because we're adding liquid to it,

but it will deglaze the pan,

and give us all that deep flavor

that we've accumulated around the sides and the edges.

And then it'll reduce, give us a lot of acidity

and bright flavor to cut through all this richness.

Oh, this smells so good.

So now you can see some bubbling on top.

But once you move your vegetables

and bacon mixture around,

you see that there's no more liquid

on the bottom of the pan,

and it doesn't smell like just raw wine.

So we're gonna add our milk.

Milk is gonna add a little bit of richness,

and it's gonna help cut through some of the acidity

that the tomatoes bring to the sauce.

So you see the milk has really combined with all of the fat

and the liquid that's in the pan.

Now we're gonna add the tomatoes.

Canned tomatoes are great for this.

They're picked at the peak of season,

and they have great flavor.

And then it's kind of like, set it and forget it.

You're gonna turn the heat down to low,

and it's gonna rock out for like an hour or two.

So, I'm gonna cook some pasta.

You wanna bring your water to a boil, salt it,

and then cook your pasta

according to the package directions.

I'm using fettuccine,

'cause it's a long pasta with a wider noodle,

and I love that to cling to the sauce.

That's it, our pasta's cooked.

So now let's put it together with our bolognese.

Always save a little bit of your pasta cooking water,

and just add a couple of tablespoons.

The starch from the water will help keep your sauce

nice and thick and rich.

I'm gonna put just a little bit of the sauce in the noodles,

just to keep them separated and broken up.

I'm gonna do a little bit of a twirl.

Yeah, I gotta act like I'm a professional.

You can garnish this with parsley, basil.

I'm just using a little bit of Parmesan.

So there you have four portions

of bacon bolognese for $11.97 cents,

which comes out to about

$2.99 per plate, mangia. [cash register dings]

[light whimsical music]

Mm, that sauce is so rich.

So it tastes meaty, but not overly bacony.

You get sweetness from the vegetables, acidity, richness,

and everything is like perfectly balanced.

So today we used bacon

in three totally different applications,

from sweet to savory to using the fat to infuse the flavor.

I really hope that you can start to see

the versatility of bacon.

Not only is it budget-friendly,

but it can be used in so many different dishes.

Think outside the box.

Think outside the frying pan, go crazy.