Cooking with Kyle: Episode 2

For this episode I shied away from healthy things like broccoli. Because for every vitamin and mineral I consume, there must be 100 carbs and protein and mounds of sodium. Let's get underway!

Pork and beef unite after an age of war and hatred.

So here we have our ingredients: Meat, cheese, and Honey BBQ sauce, the three staples of any decent meal. I have already latticed the bacon into a weave, half of which is turkey and half regular. I didn't have enough of either on hand for the weave. Center we have two patties worth of ground beef (which was too much) and right we have some unmeasured amount of shredded mild cheddar. This is the components of a bacon explosion, but I wanted to try assembling the pieces differently this time.

Close-up of the weave. You are supposed to alternate thin and fat sides of bacon, which I don't remember doing.

We only use the finest instruments in Kyle's kitchen.

After letting the weave bake in the oven for 10-ish minutes I pulled it out, put a bowl on it, and sliced out a circle. I'll let you keep guessing where this is going.

The bowl was just a ruse, I actually just cut the shape of a a head and then uncut the details to make a perfect circle.

That isn't tin-foil, it's a pure sheet of silver.

After making the circle I mushed up some tin-foil silver and placed it on the weave. I actually had to compact it more than what is shown.

The reason this is so fuzzy is because I was simultaneously juggling kitchen knives. That were on fire.

I put the bacon back in the oven to finish and then cooked my beef in the meantime. I added the cheese near the end which in hindsight was a mistake. The shredder I had available made very fine slices and the cheddar tends to easily cling it itself, and in the end I got clumps of the stuff instead of an even distribution.

Won't find these at a fine dining restaurant. (Or any self-respecting one)

In the end, I was attempting to make a bacon taco. The weave held it's shape okay, but the edges broke apart a little and the "shell" was way too malleable to be eaten like a taco. I ended up having to go at it with a fork and knife. It was still quite delicious.

So what do we do to make it better next time? Primarily, cook the bacon for quite awhile longer. I didn't want to cook it that long because I didn't want it to become too crispy and lose all its tastiness. But you sort of have to make that sacrifice to actually create a shell. Making the whole weave turkey bacon may remedy the problem, because the turkey is naturally stiffer and more inclined to hold a shape.There are also probably better methods to giving the bacon it's shape. I saw one guy online drape it over a pair of skewers resting atop oven-safe cups. I'd also like to have more toppings, to make it more akin to a taco, and less like a taco-shaped bacon explosion.

This one was for the meat-lovers, and I already have the photos for the next episode, which actually resulted the way I had intended. Stay tuned!