The Great Christmas Apple-Bacon Pie Caper

(click to enlarge)

Yes, that is a latticework of crispy bacon atop a homemade Granny Smith apple pie, in my kitchen.

It was an experiment.

As you may know (depending on which corners of the web you encounter) bacon has been a popular meme for the last year or so. I've exchanged many bacon-related posts and jokes with friends online.

And just to be clear, "bacon" isn't a code. It's not Kevin nor Sir Francis. Nor "bacon" as slang for something else. Nor as synecdoche or allegory or metaphor.

I mean bacon. Sizzling, smoky, curling, crackling, spitting, artery-clogging American bacon. Not that wimpy back bacon beloved by our noble Canadian neighbors to the north, but the cuts the British call with unappetizing accuracy: streaky bacon. (Of course, folks from the UK also eat "Toad in the Hole" for breakfast and "Spotted Dick" for dessert, so they have a history of bad food names.)

I almost never eat bacon anymore, but I love the taste. Bacon is the true breakfast of champions. Champions who die prematurely, perhaps, but with a smile on their greasy lips.

The bacon-meme is so pervasive that a slew of odd bacon-related and bacon flavored products have cropped up. Bacon breath mints. Bacon vodka. Bacon cologne. It goes on an on. The very zeitgeist is bacon-scented.

Odd recipes involving bacon also pop up, such as this one: Shelley's bacon-apple pie

Some friends invited me to Christmas dinner, and I offered to bring dessert. An evil plan was hatched. I would attempt an apple-bacon pie.

But first I must admit that as a chef, my imagination far exceeds my cooking skills. I am not a recreational cooker. As a single guy, the room with the refrig and stove is less a "kitchen" than a feeding station. I could furnish it from Cabela's; a hopper with a spreader disk on a timer to scatter kibble in my direction from time to time would be OK. Maybe a salt lick too.

But every once in a while, I enjoy trying something new.

Like Apple-Bacon Pie.

I got the supplies; enough for two complete pies. You see, in my state of primitive cookery, I knew that making pie would be anything but "easy as."

The first pie was for practice; a sacrifice to the gods of cholesterol.

The day before Christmas, I got everything ready for the trial run. Ironically, I hand-peeled and sliced fresh apples, used only a small amount of raw sugar, a pinch of honest to god sea salt, and other healthful and minimally processed ingredients along with the excessively processed, death-by-rasher, no-redeeming-virtue-other-than-its-taste bacon. It was like mixing Mother's Milk with plutonium.

I'm adventurous, but not suicidal, so I decided to change the recipe from the start: I'd precook the bacon. The recipe didn't call for *any* precooking, but I couldn't stand the thought of tons of bacon fat in the pie. By precooking, I could get out most of the fat before the bacon was baked with the pie. Right?

I'd seen a photo of bacon woven into a lattice before cooking, so I tried that. Ever to go camp and make potholders from yarn? Just like that, but slipperier and messier. It took a dozen slices (six in each direction) to make a lattice that would cover a standard 9" (23cm) pie.

I put the woven lattice on about half a dozen paper towels, and placed three layers of paper towels on top. I put the whole thing into the microwave. Hmmmm. A bit under a minute per slice is usually about right for this oven, but this bacon would be cooked twice, so I didn't want it fully cooked in the first step. I just wanted to liquefy and draw off some of the fat.

Eight minutes?

About 4 minutes later, my kitchen smelled glorious. I could see the paper towels doing their job, drawing the fat off the bacon. But the bacon was covered, so I couldn't visually check it.

I opened the oven at 6 minutes. The aroma was heady. It didn't just smell like bacon. IT SMELLED LIKE BACON!

The bacon was coming along at 6 minutes, and that was good, But how much more should I cook it?

I let it go the full 8 minutes, after which both my mouth and eyes were watering. Wow! HOLY SHIT, I MEAN BACON!

The meat lattice was still soft enough to need careful handling, but it was indeed partially cooked. I was optimistic.

I opened a door to air the house. I'm sure that for miles around, bears awoke from hibernation. A small cumulus of lard aerosol may have formed over my house.

I was ready for the moment: I'd already prepped the rest of the ingredients and so rapidly assembled everything, thinking that maybe this pie really would be as easy as.

OK, it wasn't.

An hour later, I saw I had precooked the bacon too long. The bacon survived the double-cooking --- what could hurt cooked bacon?--- but it had become uselessly crumbly, losing all structure. I'd turned the rashers into ghostly strips of loosely cohered bacon dust.

And the pie itself? Well, if I'd been aiming for a nice apple soup, it would have been perfect.

I mentally adjusted the recipe. I'd precook the bacon at lower temperatures and to a lesser degree of doneness, and start with thicker slices. I'd reduce the number of apples in the pie and increase the flour to change the liquid/solid ratio. And I'd cook the pie a bit longer to help take care of excess liquid.

But, a sign of my waning confidence after the first pie failure, I also went out on Christmas Eve and bought a standard, bacon-free, utterly plain Sarah Lee frozen apple pie to bring along as my emergency back-up dessert.

On Christmas day, the moment arrived and I repeated my pie-making steps with the adjustments. It all looked OK going into the main oven, and I let exothermy work its magic for a while.

The house once again infused with the unsubtle aroma of bacon. It didn't seem as strong as the previous day but I couldn't tell if it was actually less or I'd just become desensitized to it. After all, I'd cooked what is for me probably a year's worth of bacon in one glorious afternoon the day before.

But yesterday, the scent had been a deafening shout. Today, it was an insistent, pervasive whisper. Baaaaconnnn.

The pie came out and actually looked OK. I'd messed up the interface between the crust and the bacon lattice, but the lattice had retained its size and shape and bacony character.

Come on: get a better view. Click it:




I was encouraged, but uncertain enough that I also cooked the Sarah Lee pie, and brought them both, warm from the oven, to dinner.

My friends were taken aback by the pie. I waxed loquacious on the balance of sweet and salty flavors, the juxtaposition of softly cooked apples with crunchy firm bacon. I played up the natural and minimally-processed foods that made up the bulk of the pie.

We sliced it--- surprisingly, it sliced OK, although cutting crust and bacon together was a challenge. It wasn't soupy at all, and I could detect no excess bacon fat in or on the pie.

I tried a bite: I brought a fresh-baked, steaming forkful to my mouth, and opened wide.

Meh.

It was OK, but only that. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps I'd been overexposed to bacon in the last 2 days. But the pie just didn't have the zing I was hoping for.

It was good enough that the Sarah Lee pie went to another friend's party later that evening. But The Great Christmas Apple-Bacon Pie Caper was not what I'd call a resounding success.

All in all, this pie was all build-up with very little payoff.

Sort of like this post.