PIG CANDY HERESY!
by Gordon Hubbell
Among outdoor cooks, there is a truly fanatical loyalty and preference for our favorite brands and styles of cooking apparatuses. This often causes us to at least attempt, if not exactly to succeed, at trying to cook anything outdoors that we might customarily cook inside. Turkeys, cookies, pizzas, cakes, pies, muffins, veggies, breads, and just about anything else to which applied heat is necessary for a finished result. These trials are fun and I’ll admit I’ve done my share of avoiding the kitchen when the patio offered a friendlier environment and contained my beloved cookers ready and waiting to be challenged. Most of the time, I’m successful
There is, however, one “dish” that I’ve learned to keep in the kitchen. That one dish is what is sometimes referred to a legal heroin – pig candy. I quit doing it outside a couple of years ago for a very good reason: The mess! So, if I may beg forgiveness in advance for advocating a non-outdoor method I’ll describe my significantly easier when done in the oven approach.
This morning I put the finishing touches on six pounds of pig candy. That turned out to be 122 pieces using Hormel Black Label premium thick-sliced bacon and Tim’s vaunted Super Pig seasoning that many of us know so well. It wasn’t easy to do that much, but I didn’t burn or undercook any, didn’t make a slimy mess, and kept my blood pressure within acceptable boundaries.
Why in the oven? First of all, six pounds of bacon yields about a pound of pig candy and five pounds of grease. It’s that grease, spread all over the inside of my cooker and drizzling down into the grease traps of my smokers that I despise. It takes a lot of elbow grease to scrape it out, scour the channels, and clean up the drip pans. Another, thing: In my oven there’s a window in the door where I can keep an eye on its state of doneness without lifting a lid and letting loose all the precious heat I’ve built up to cook that bacon.
Every year in the late Spring, I create this five pounds of grease and one pound of pig candy as a treat for the inmates at an ecumenical Prison Ministry where I’m one of the facilitator/teachers. We have a “graduation” and take the Summer off after celebrating with a meal that is mostly catered but for which some things have become tradition. Pig candy is one of those traditions, and the inmates have let me know that if I don’t show up with it, I’ll not be going out the gate and back home, but will rather get to enjoy an extended stay with them. I understand and comply, of course.
Now, if all you’re going to do is make a small batch (say, a pound of bacon or so) then gunking up your grill or cooker may not be that big a deal, but three years ago I spent most of a weekend reclaiming the use of my Traeger following its use for six pounds of pig candy throughput. I wasn’t happy. I like using my cookers, not cleaning them.
Over the last two years, I’ve developed a much easier and simpler approach for my annual pig candy marathon. Here’s the scoop on how to do it gracefully:
Ingredients:
High quality lean thick-sliced bacon
Super Pig or your own blend of sugar, salt and spices to coat
Chocolate chips (learned this from Art, ACW3)
Supplies:
Sufficient shallow baking trays
Parchment paper to line them
Cooling racks (cake coolers work very well)
Non-stick foil
Recipe:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice bacon in half, lengthwise. Line baking trays with parchment and place bacon strips closely, almost touching. Sprinkle on Super Pig or your rub in moderate coat. Turn the strips over and repeat rub on other side.
Place trays in oven (mine will hold two half-size “hotel” pans – if you have a double oven you’ll be able to use three or four, most likely). Set timer for 30 minutes. After thirty minutes, check doneness. You may need some additional time and even though the thickness is uniform on good bacon, some pieces will always cook faster than others. Remove trays from oven and “cherry pick” the done pieces and move them to the cooling rack to set up, returning the not yet done ones for another five minutes or so. You’re looking for doneness that isn’t quite crisp (they’ll fall apart) but far from limp. With practice I’ve gotten where I can tell the right state of the cook just by looking at them. The best part is next. Let the pan cool for about thirty minutes then remove the grease-soaked parchment straight to the trash can. No muss, no fuss, no bother, no cursing, no fuming, no scraping, no nonsense. The pans can then be immediately reused for the next batch (with a new liner) or tossed in the dishwasher!
Once the pieces have cooled to room temperature, move them to whatever you’re going to store them in, layering by placing non-stick foil between each level (I use an 11 X 14 disposable aluminum baking pan with a snap-on plastic lid). Place in the refrigerator for at least three hours or overnight to fully set the candy.
Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler until fully liquid then lower heat or remove from heat (the chocolate will stay liquid for quite a while in the pan). Dip one end of each cold pig candy piece about an inch or so into the hot chocolate then place the dipped pieces on sheets of non-stick foil laid out on countertops, flat. The chocolate will require a couple of hours to re-harden. Once it has set, place the candy back into the previously used pan using the same divider sheets used for the initial cooling. It will keep well several days, but I’ve never had any around that long!
An obvious option to the above recipe and approach is to use more chocolate and coat more or all of each piece – that’s up to you. I’ve found that since each half bacon slice creates a nicely bite-sized piece of pig candy, coating just the one end provides plenty of chocolaty goodness and is easier to handle than trying to coat the whole thing. But, if you’re a real chocolate freak go to it!
Heresy! Yes, I don’t do pig candy out in my cookshack and I protect my beloved smokers from the ravages of bacon grease and my psyche from the trauma of all that cleanup. The trace of extra smokiness I would get from doing it in my smoker isn’t really noticeable considering that the bacon is already smoked and salted, anyway.
In years past heretics like me have been burned at the stake, flogged, tarred and feathered, hung, placed in stocks, publically ridiculed, tortured or at least run out of town on a rail. I shall await my fate. But, I’ll be doing it with a clean smoker!
Hub