Thought some of you might appreciate this recipe:
The recipe:
1. Cut two slices of bacon into thin strips and fry, reserving 1 tbsp of bacon fat.
2. Add the cooled grease to a blender with 8 scoops (a quart) of French vanilla ice cream, 6 tbsp whole milk, 2 tbsp pure maple syrup, and a pinch of salt.
3. Pulse to blend (it’s very thick, so you may need to mash the mixture down with a spatula between pulses) until the shake moves easily, about 30 to 90 seconds.
4. Pour into chilled glasses and serve (makes 3 ½ cups)
The story:
“It’s a well-documented and indisputable fact that everything tastes better with bacon,” says Reid, the kitchen equipment specialist on America’s Test Kitchen and former editor for Cook’s Illustrated. “In general when I cook, I like to mess around with the interplay between sweet and savory (in the book I also have a salted variation of a tamarind, sugar and chile shake, and a toasted oatmeal shake with scotch in it). I saw a maple-bacon donut at Voodoo Donuts in Portland, Oregon that intrigued me, and I was also thinking about breakfast plates, where you douse pancakes or waffles in maple syrup, which inevitably gets all over the bacon too. It always tastes great.” Almost blasphemously, Reid’s recipe only uses some of the rendered bacon fat, casting the bacon itself aside as a pre-shake nibble. “I considered suggesting to crumble the bacon on the shake as a garnish, but I thought that might be a bit too much for the bacon disinclined among the readers.” Add the complementary sweetness of real maple syrup, and you’ve got a dessert that drinks like a meal.
