How To Elevate Your Bacon With 2 Pantry Staples

Elevating bacon is relatively simple in practice but finding the right ingredients can be a challenge. You want something that complements its fatty, salty flavor but won't add so much more that it becomes inedible. But a simple balance of soy sauce and honey covers a wide range of flavors without complicating the recipe and both ingredients come in a wide enough variety to unlock plenty of avenues to new tastes.

For this trick, you're aiming to glaze rather than stew your pork. This caramelizes the honey and keeps the bacon crispy, and roasted sugars and Maillard-crusted pork are one of the most delicious combos you could hope for. If you're glazing your own bacon, you usually want to opt for an American style that absorbs just enough liquid to become seasoned but not so much it becomes oversaturated and waterlogged. This also concentrates the soy sauce, bringing all that umami goodness to the forefront for something sweet, savory, and just a touch smoky.

To get something like candied bacon without burning the sugar, you need radiant heat and precise control, so skip the pan and use your oven instead. When cooking bacon in the oven, you want to hover around 400 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to develop the right texture but not so hot that you'll end up with charcoal strips. Since you're using a sugary ingredient, add your glaze once the bacon is about halfway done and keep a close eye on it to ensure nothing burns.

If you start with salty, smoky American bacon, you already have a great base for flavor. However, to get the most out of the recipe, you'll want to find complementary ingredients, particularly ones that add new, subtle nuances and let the meat do the heavy lifting. Sticking with light-colored honeys and lower sodium soy sauces should prevent any one flavor from becoming too dominant while still preventing the need to hunt down anything too obscure.

Dark honey, like buckwheat, tends to be quite pungent even in small doses and light honey, like that made from white clover or acacia, is subtle. The goal is to find something strong enough to cut through the heaviness of pork and soy sauce but not so potent that it overwhelms everything else. To do this, stick with something in the middle of the color grading scale. A jar with a gently golden hue is not only the easiest to find, but also has a middle-of-the-ground flavor from a solid blend of flowers.

Of all the types of soy sauce you can cook with, light varieties are your best bet for glazing bacon. Not only is it more difficult to use too much, but they're also available at just about any store. While sweet additions can balance over-salted foods, you'll still want to be careful of how much you use depending on how salty your bacon is. If you want more soy taste, opt for a low-sodium variety that reduces down with the honey for tons of umami.