Dethroner’s Bitchin’ Kitchen: Bacon Snack Bars
5 Comments Published by Joel August 22nd, 2006 in Food, Meat. Share This
How was last night’s Beer School Homework? If for some awful reason you had a hard time working up a thirst, let this recipe for ‘Bacon Snack Bars’ juice up your glands and cast a long shadow over your heart.
This recipe is the sort of marketing-driven culinary travesty that attempts to cram as many packaged food options into a single slithering snack slug, yet we remain…curious. There is clearly merit in the idea of a Bacon Snack Bar, but we have a hard time suspecting that the successful variant will involve any TANG Orange Flavor Drink Mix as a binder or otherwise. (Although, TANG by itself is delicious, an astronaut-inspired Metamucil for children.)
Here are the recipe’s ingredients, sans instructions, which are more or less “Heat, Mix, and Press.”
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 pkg. (2.8 oz.) OSCAR MAYER Real Bacon Recipe Pieces
4 tsp. TANG Orange Flavor Drink Mix
3 cups POST HONEY BUNCHES OF OATS Cereal, any variety
Well that’s yer problem right there, up on line four. No matter how “Real” those Pieces are they’ll never match the flavor of a freshly-seared slice of bacon.
Let’s figure this out: How do we make the ultimate bacon snack bars? We’ll offer the first idea for critique: Can an intact slice of bacon, while visually appealing, withstand the needs of our bar or must we deign to cut it into pieces?
Bacon Snack Bars [Kraft Foods]
I’d try something like this (all quantities approximate):
1 to 2 cups of instant, unflavored oatmeal
1 to 2 cups crushed Wheat Nuts snacks
1/4 to 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup real maple syrup
1 egg white
1/4 to 1/2 half a bottle of a tasty porter style ale
perhaps 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour
several strips of bacon, fried until crisp and crumbled
reserved bacon grease
I’d probably start by combining the oatmeal, Wheat Nuts, sugar, and syrup in a work bowl, mixing by hand, then adding the egg white, bacon, and (cooled) bacon grease and mixing again. Then the tricky part. The idea here is to use the beer and flour mixture as a sort of replacement binder for the peanut butter, so I’d probably start by adding a little beer until the mixture looks pretty wet, then mix in the flour. Sort of a dark beer batter. Which is exactly the idea, because we’re trying to make something to drop in the fryer…which is the next step. So they need to be bound well enough by the egg, beer, and flour to be able to hold together through the frying process. So it will obviously require some trial and error to get it right. But I think it could be good. Maybe.
Mainly I just wanted to combine bacon, beer, and deep frying, though.
What part of Bacon is not already an “ultimate bacon snack bar?” A cooked piece is already crunchy and chewy and in the approximate shape of a bar.
I might also add that bacon in this form is a perfect accompaniment to beer. Laugh if you want, but try it.. it’s salty and fatty and goes great. So, that might also make it the Ultimate Bar Snack.
I have had this idea for awhile.
-Take a cube of havarti
-put a nut in the center
-wrap with bacon
-deep fry it or nuke in the microwave ?
Iam not sure about the exection of it because I am not allowed to use our kitchen for such things (so Iam told anyway)
I had thought of calling it a monkeys fist and selling them from a stand at a nascar event but I am long on medicore ideas and short on initiative.
I have a variant of this, but do not have the recipe in front of me….
Has anyone ever heard of “sausage balls”? Well these are similar, but are bars, not balls.
Bisquick (or any other biscuit mix)
Sliced almonds
cheddar, swiss, and parmesan cheeses
bacon (cooked to taste, and cut into small pieces or crumbled)
wild green onion
cream of mushroom soup
mix until a bit like moist cookie dough
flatten on a cookie sheet into bar form.
Bake at biscuit instructions on the box plus 5-10 mins.
sprinkle with more cheese and bacon 5 mins before removing.
Cut into bars, and serve with sour cream or ranch dip.
I’ve been making sausage balls for a while and I usually keep it really simple
3 cups of Bisquick
16 oz of shredded sharp cheddar cheese
16 oz of bulk sausage
Mix and add just a few shots of water to bring together.
Put into 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until golden brown
Your friends will LOVE it and the look of the sausage balls will invite lots of jokes.