Black bean soup + broccoli + mashed potatoes = just add bacon! In my quest to eat healthy this month, I’ve had a lonely package of bacon sitting in the fridge, waiting to expire. In a last ditch effort to use it on this lazy Sunday evening, I dug up a couple of bacon-based recipes from one of my old favorites, Epicurious (which recently released a free iPhone app). The results didn’t compromise my diet, and David cleaned his plate:
- Black Bean Soup – My paraphrased version left out the jalapenos, oregano, bay leaf, thyme and cilantro; and since I used canned black beans instead of dried, I cut back on the simmering time (1 hour vs. 2.5). I also used homemade (frozen) chicken broth, defrosted in the microwave.
- Broccoli with Hot Bacon Dressing – I left out the vinegar and raisins.
- Mashed Potatoes – No surprises; standard butter, 1% milk, salt & pepper recipe.
I may have dodged a grease fire in the process, but I did learn a nifty trick for cooking bacon when you need to collect the fat for use later: layer the strips of bacon inside a wok or coffee filter-shaped sauce pan. Plus, the slanted angle seemed to prevent a lot of the typical splatter that happens in a flat frying pan.
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I have a cool trick to prevent grease from splattering my stove when I cook bacon. I throw a paper towel in the pan w/the bacon. I use the tongs to move it around and soak up the grease and toss it after it’s all used up. It usually takes two towels to clean up the grease and by the time the bacon’s done, there’s no grease left in the pan, just bacon.
(And I really like your blog.)