3 Game-Changing Bacon Recipes For Under $3

Hi, I'm Adrienne Cheatham

[drum set playing]

and today I have been tasked with making three delicious

and budget-friendly meals, highlighting

bacon.

[they chuckle]

[bacon crunches]

Thanks guys. Oh yeah, I'll take all of 'em.

[they chuckle]

I'll be making breakfast, lunch, and dinner

for under $3 a plate, using bacon in different applications.

[air 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 going to be using standard everyday bacon,

chopping it up, infusing the flavor,

using the fat separately, and just kind of playing with it

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

First up, we're making breakfast.

[laid back jazz music plays]

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 kind of like candied bacon.

It's delicious.

That needs to start with the bacon.

That's going to give me what I need

for the filling and the icing.

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

and we're going to be left with these crispy little bits

but we're using both bits and fat

in the icing, as well as the filling.

Oh, it's like the sound of joy.

I'm going to 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 want to get a little more fat in my bowl.

I'm just going to leave about

a tablespoon worth of bacon bits and fat in the pan.

That is going to be used for our icing.

For my filling, all I'm going to 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 going to soften it

so they can kind of 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.

All spice.

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 going to 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 going to 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,

and the water will evaporate and lift your dough.

So you'll have a nice flaky crust.

I'm just going to add milk.

You do want to 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 hands-y.

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 going to 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 going to roll it out.

I do want to lightly dust my roller,

but I want to go about 12 by 16,

so it's going to get pretty thin.

You do want to make sure it's even thickness.

You don't want to 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 going to spread our little

brown sugar bacon filling.

I'm not going to go all the way to the rolling edges

just because I want them to seal closed.

It smells so freaking good.

You don't want to roll it too tight,

but you want to make sure that it rests on the seam,

because we want that to seal it kind of closed.

Don't worry if the edges are not even.

I'm going to use a very sharp knife.

You can use a serrated.

I just don't want to 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 going to rub the inside so that it doesn't stick.

The little uneven edges.

Guess what?

That's going to go down so it doesn't matter.

I'm going to stick that guy in the middle

and we're going to build out from there.

For all of the seams,

you want to make sure that they're facing in

because your cinnamon rolls are going to 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

and in the meantime, let's make our icing.

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.

So in the pan we left behind

about one tablespoon of bacon bits and fat.

I'm just going to scrape with the whisk

on the bottom of the pan, loosen up

some of that bacon that got stuck.

That is why we use stainless steel for this.

And we're just going to dust our powdered sugar

right into the pan.

Whisk that together.

You see it starting to get like kind of clumpy

but it's not quite loose yet.

We're going to 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 going to 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 want to 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 want to spread the love evenly, now.

Don't let your cinnamon rolls get jealous,

and it just kind of 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 $1.30 per portion.

[register dings]

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 all spice, balanced out with that bacon.

There aren't a lot of meals that you can make

for $1.30 that are this good.

[upbeat music plays]

Okay, soup time.

We are making a BLT inspired soup.

[air whooshes]

So that is basically a beautiful bright green soup

that's kind of going to 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.

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 going to sit and macerate

so we're going to put a little bit

of salt and pepper on them.

So now I'm just going to 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 want to 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 going to 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 going to 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 going to pour off

'cause we want to save it.

We're going to 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 going to 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 going to put our onions in.

Our celery and our garlic.

All of these aromatics are going to cook on medium low heat

in our fat and sweat down until they're translucent.

So it's going to slowly caramelize those flavors.

We're going to develop a lot of complexity with this

and it's going to 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 de-glazing we're going to 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 going to scrape up all those bits of bacon protein

that got stuck to the bottom of the pan.

So the wine is going to do a lot of things here.

It's going to emulsify a little bit into that fat

and thicken up a little bit and it's going to 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 kind of supports everything else.

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

You want it to be kind of sticky looking,

but not fully dry yet.

I'm going to 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 going to 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 going to 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 want to take out your bay leaf

before you puree.

It is time to blend.

[soup pouring into blender]

[jazz music plays]

Also going to 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 par cooked.

I'm not thawing it completely though.

Very important.

I want it to be partially frozen

because it's going to cool all of this down

so that the color stays bright and green.

So you always want to start on low speed

and then gradually bring it up.

You don't want to start on high speed

because the speed of the initial twirl of the blades

is going to shoot all of your liquid and ingredients upward.

[blender whirs]

We want to go really fine.

We want this to be a nice smooth, bright green,

homogenous soup.

[blender stops]

Mm!

[spoon hits sink]

Very nice.

We could use a little bit more salt though,

and maybe a little bit of black pepper.

We're also going to add a little bit more mayonnaise.

This edition of mayonnaise is going to add as much acidity

as it does flavor because we're not cooking it out

and melting that fat, so it's also going to give us

a little bit more body.

It's going to whip that soup so it's nice and like

rich and smooth.

All right!

Mmm, mmm!

As simple as these ingredients are,

if you cook them properly and treat them well,

they will be freaking delicious.

But I'm going to 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 going to cut our bacon sandwiches

into about 9 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, and one more for me to eat.

[they eat a bite of sandwich]

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 $2.20 cents per portion.

Mmm.

Mmm!

Mmm.

That is lovely.

It's got a lot of 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.

[bright jazz music plays]

For our final dish, we're going to be making

bacon bolognese.

Bolognese is a classic meat stew

usually using beef, pork, and veal.

But in our version we're going to swap out

all of those different types of meat for bacon.

We're also going to 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,

just be careful 'cause you don't want

to 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.

[blade peeling carrots]

And this is all going to 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.

So time to make our bolognese.

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

[bacon sizzles]

Grinding the bacon helps the fat render out more evenly.

You really want to 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 going to add our chopped mushrooms.

The mushrooms are going to 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 going to add in.

I'm going to season a little bit here.

I'm going to turn the heat back up.

And we're going to let these mushrooms cook.

The mushrooms soaked up all the bacon fat

and butter from before.

So I'm just going to add a little bit back in.

You can see the color is darkening.

They're starting to caramelize.

So I'm going to 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 going to 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 going to get any more sweating

or caramelization because we're adding liquid to it

but it will de-glaze 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 going to add our milk.

Milk is going to add a little bit of richness

and it's going to 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 going to 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 going to turn the heat down to low

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

So I'm going to cook some pasta.

You want to 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 going to put just a little bit of the sauce

in the noodles just to keep them separated and broken up.

I'm going to do a little bit of a twirl.

Yeah, I got to 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, which comes out to about $2.99 per plate.

Mangia!

[jazz music playing]

Mmm.

That sauce is so rich,

so it tastes meaty but not overly bacon-y.

You get sweetness from the vegetables,

acidity, richness and everything is like perfectly balanced.

So today we use 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.

[cymbal crashes lightly]