This is going to be a quick little post because we’re in the middle of an international move. But while we’re temporarily back in the US to get our stuff packed up and sent to England, we’ve been eating US foods we can’t get over there, such as Shake’n’Bake for pork chops.
The other day my ten year old daughter Peo had a genius moment, I don’t even mean the whole string theory thing this time. She asked, “Can you shake’n’bake bacon?”
I thought about it for a moment and realized bacon is just another pork product, so I said I didn’t know but that we could give it a try.
So tonight alongside a pork chop dinner, I took five strips of regular grocery store bacon (supposedly “thick cut” but it’s been years since I’ve seen actual thick slices of bacon from a US supplier) and put them in the Shake’n’Bake baggie the same as I’d done with the pork chops moments before. I used the Original Pork flavour. It took a few extra shakes because they’re long and fold up on themselves, but otherwise no special handling was required.
Then I put them on their own tray and baked them along with the pork chops in a 400F oven for 20 minutes.
It turned out that 20 minutes was a bit long. I should’ve removed them at 15 minutes because they got a bit overdone. But other than that, it actually worked!
You can see the right side is too dark and a bit too much fat has rendered out. Five minutes earlier would’ve been perfect.
It comes out as breaded, crispy bacon. Peo liked them too.
Peo: “Oh my god these are SO GOOD!”
So there you have it. You can totally use Shake’n’Bake directly on strips of bacon. Just don’t overcook it. 15 minutes at 400F/200C for “thick” strips, less time for thin strips, or possibly drop the oven down to 375F/190C.
They’d probably make good dipping snacks for those into that sort of thing.
Be back soon with some other posts since I’ve been given some products to try and books to review while in the US. I also just did a demo for the Austin cake club on a bleeding skull cake, so I’ll post that soon too. Getting to those as fast as I can!
