Behold, Candied Strawberry Bacon. It might be the best thing, since, well, my low carb peanut butter and chocolate dipped candied bacon. Seriously, y’all, it’s some melt-in-your-mouth crazy town. The easy way to candy bacon is to cook it on a low temperature for about an hour with something sugary on top— like brown sugar. I added Parkesdale Farms Strawberry Syrup to the mix and, well, just call it Strawberry Heaven.
I had the chance to partner with the Parke family for my latest Weather Channel segment and these strawberries are seriously the sweetest, juiciest berries I’ve ever tasted. Below is a shot of me with Matthew Parke, after he picked me a long stem red strawberry!
The caption should just be “WHOAH.”
After my candied strawberry bacon experiment, I added it to some candied walnuts and then feeling guilty for all the candied things happening, I threw in some more strawberries and a little feta and spinach for good measure. My kind of salad.
Ingredients
- 1 package of center cut bacon
- brown sugar
- Parkesdale Strawberry syrup
- 1 bag of walnut pieces (about 2 cups)
- 2 Tb butter
- 1 Tb brown sugar
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- sprinkle of cayenne pepper
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1 Tb brown sugar
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- Fresh spinach leaves
- sliced strawberries
- feta
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 250
- Lay out bacon on a rack over a large rimmed baking pan
- Press brown sugar into each slice of bacon from top to bottom.
- Drizzle strawberry syrup over each slice.
- Bake for one hour.
- When cool, cut up bacon and put on salad
- Heat up butter on medium heat in a large frying pan and add walnuts. Add brown sugar, cumin, salt and cayenne and stir to coat. Toast in pan for another 5 minutes and set aside.
- Add garlic, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar to food processor and pulse till combined. Turn processor back on and slowly add olive oil to emulsify.
- Toss spinach with dressing.
- Add feta, strawberries, walnuts and bacon to dressed spinach and serve.