Bacon Jam

I'll be honest -I AM that sort of nerd that keeps aware of the happenings in the Bacon world. Bacon is tasty. I follow the Bacon Subreddit, the Ministry of Bacon is followed on Twitter - and in my searches, I came across Bacon Jam! I saw a few different recipes for it, and ended up going with the one from Half Assed Kitchen, just with a few modifications.

Firstly, cooking a pound of bacon in a skillet is just craziness. It takes too long, it's messy, and if you're a clutz like me, hot bacon grease splatters all over you. So I cooked all but three strips (that didn't fit on my pan) in my oven using the time-honored Alton Brown tradition (only follow the "cooking the bacon" step). I'd highly recommend using latex (or vinyl or nitrile) gloves for most of this recipe, as yours hands will get relatively greasy.

The three strips that wouldn't fit on the pan I cooked on the skillet to get some bacon grease to sautee the onions and garlic in. Since I saw that the recipe recommended adding water midway through cooking, I used all of the grease from the three bacon strips - about 2-3 tablespoon full, I'd wager.

Once the bacon was "just barely done," I took it out of the oven, and cut it into little strips with kitchen sheers, and put everything into my trusty Crockpot. The recipe I was using said 3-4 hours on Low in a Crockpot, and that ended up being way, way too short. At the end of three hours, I ran it for another three hours on High, and it was pretty close to perfect (perhaps a hair overdone).

I didn't opt to run it through the food processor because it was already somewhat fine, but if I make it again I probably will. I also think that I'd modify the recipe to have a bit less onion, as a whole onion seemed to overpower it.