How To Ensure The Best Meat-To-Sweet Ratio For Chocolate Bacon

Everyone loves a good salty-sweet combo. Whether it's chocolate-covered pretzels or potato chips, salted caramel sauce, or salty fudge brownies, the taste bud-enhancing pairing is always, without a doubt, delicious. The ultimate incarnation of this combo is chocolate-covered bacon. The bacon is wonderfully salty, while the chocolate is sweet and complex. Joining the two is seemingly a no-brainer, but you do want to be careful to get the meat-to-sweet ratio right.

For this, you need thick-cut, plain bacon. Thick-cut bacon isn't flavored any differently than standard bacon, only cut into thicker slices. It cooks incredibly well and is sturdy enough to not simply break apart under the hard chocolate layer. However, another reason you want to use plain bacon is simply for the fact that it offers the best pure bacon flavor. Other smoked varieties of bacon, like applewood or even maple, have their place in the chocolate-covered bacon world, but if you want the true essence of bacon against the chocolate, this is your best bet.

This is not to say that the other types of bacon won't work. Indeed, the smokiness of some adds an extra layer of complexity. But if you're looking for the purest ratio of meat-to-sweet, there is nothing better than straightforward, thick-cut bacon. 

Making chocolate-covered bacon is a very simple endeavor. You can bake your bacon in the oven or pan-fry it on the stove. Just make sure you cook it to the point where it becomes crisp since floppy bacon won't hold its shape when coated with melted chocolate. Allow the bacon to drain and cool on some paper towels. Now, at this stage, you can either candy the bacon with a layer of brown sugar and spices or leave it as it is. The candy coating will add an extra layer of strength to the bacon, as well as provide additional sweetness.

Next, melt your chocolate. This should be semisweet baking chocolate that will melt nice and smooth. You can, however, use milk, dark, or white chocolate if it is your preference. Instead of trying to dip the bacon into the melted chocolate, take a basting brush and brush both sides of the bacon until you get a nice even coating. Refrigerate the chocolate-covered bacon until everything is cooled and set.

You could also add any number of toppings to the chocolate-covered bacon while the chocolate is still melted. This could be chopped nuts, candy sprinkles, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, or shaved coconut. However you choose to top it, just make sure you're using thick-cut bacon to get the best ratio of meat-to-sweet in your chocolate-covered bacon.