Bacon has been a food trend for the past few years. Who needs a list to tell you bacon is so good? Bacon is one of those foods that transcends top 10 lists and trends. Bacon has the best of all food qualities – smoky, salty, sweet, and heat.
There are a lot of positives about bacon being on top of the food world right now. For one, it used to be that your bacon choices at the grocery store consisted of thick or thin. Now there are more craft style varieties in the supermarket – apple wood smoked bacon, coppa bacon, pepper maple bacon, you name it. Another good thing about the bacon food trend is that it is easier to buy pork bellies, curing salt, and everything you need to home cure and smoke bacon at home.
One of the few bad things about the bacon fad is there are a lot of recipes out there with a sad piece of undercooked bacon wrapped around whatever. This recipe avoids that because I borrow the “high and slow” technique from renowned BBQ chef, Adam Perry Lang. I’ve had the opportunity to interview Chef Lang on a few occasions and we specifically talked about this technique. Instead of a quick sear that will leave dark grill marks on about 20% of the meat’s surface, the frequent turning builds a golden brown crust on most of the surface. As a side benefit, by turning the meat on the side like Lang does, you get your bacon actually cooked through.
Chef uses the technique on beef fillet but after I had a really poorly executed bacon wrapped pork tenderloin dish at a Mexican restaurant, I knew that I could do better using the “high and slow” technique with pork. Because this technique starts high up in the grill on a raised rack and then finishes close to the coals, I knew the perfect grill would be one with an adjustable charcoal tray like my Char-Broil Charcoal Grill 780.
This recipe is for the hands on grill master, who likes to be involved with the cooking process. It’s a little extra work but the delicious layers of flavour are worth it.
