The Best Cut For Candied Bacon, According To Alton Brown

Alton Brown has been dishing out science-backed, top-shelf recipe advice longer than some of us have been alive. From fancy roast dinners to the simplest of sandwiches, he has a knack for breaking dishes down to their key components, tweaking those a bit (or a lot), and showing exactly why those changes make it better. Take candied bacon. This treat was made for lovers of the salty-sweet flavor combo. On his website, Alton himself referred to it as a "candy bar, but with pork at its heart." 

To make it, just slap some sugar on a slab of bacon, cook it up, and boom, done. Simple, right? You'd be forgiven for thinking so since people don't often make their own candied bacon. According to Alton Brown's advice, start with natural and uncured bacon.  Rather than cooking temperature or sugar application, this is the most important piece of the candied bacon puzzle. Natural, uncured bacon gives you the perfect-sized cut. It falls somewhere between standard thin bacon and thick-cut bacon. When you fire up your broiler, thick-cut won't firm up nicely and may leave you with a fatty, sugary, limp mess. If you use regular or thin, it may burn instead of caramelizing. But natural, uncured bacon is the Goldilocks cut you need to achieve a tender strip of pork with a crunchy, sweet exterior.

Is uncured bacon better for candied bacon? Sure. Is it better for your health? Well, not really. The nomenclature is a bit misleading. You see, uncured bacon isn't actually uncured, it's just cured naturally. The main difference between cured and uncured bacon is whether the bacon uses natural or artificial nitrite or nitrate ingredients. Uncured bacon gets the rubdown with a salty mixture that includes nitrite-containing celery derivatives, leading some to claim that uncured bacon is a lie. You're still getting nitrites or nitrates; the source just differs.

With that said, health probably shouldn't be your primary focus here. We're talking about consuming a slab of sugar-coated pork — no matter what cut you use, it's not going to be the best for you. But most foods are okay for most people in moderation, and little treats often help us out mentally and emotionally, which can boost your physical health, too. So fire up that broiler, buy that natural, uncured pack of bacon, and indulge a little.