Jeff Lesser

I am Jeff Lesser. I am a Boulder, Colorado native. I like my friends, family, bikes, tattoos, snowboarding, craft beer, good food, snow, economics, music, shows, computers, math, politics, social media, and anything involving speed. I specialize in internet marketing and ecommerce development for Giantnerd®.

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An Adventure In Cooking: BLT Bites

I was cruising the internet the other day when I came upon a post where someone was creating single serving BLTs by taking a muffin or mini-cake pan and weaving a basket out of bacon and loading the lettuce and tomato into the bacon container. I thought this was genius however they mentioned that they were rather disastrous to eat. I immediately knew the answer.

Muffin = disaster.

Mini-muffin = delicious.

So I set out to make their creation but more bit sized, and here is how it went.

I went to Target and got a mini-muffin pan, they range from $9-$15.

Then I lined the back side of the pan with aluminum foil for easy clean-up and so that the bacon wouldn’t stick to the pan. You could probably do the front side and get similar results but I didn’t try this, maybe text time.

Next I loaded the bacon around each cup and folded it down so it made a nice little cup.

And did this for the whole pan (actually only 11 since that’s how many strips of bacon were in the package I bought.)

I wasn’t concerned about making them perfect because the article I read said the bacon shrinks during cooking, while you do this there are a few pro-tips:

  1. Meat side down, fat side up. The fat is easier to fold over than the meat and the meat will look better than fat when presentation time comes.
  2. When circling the cup keep the overlap of bacon as flat as possible this will create more structure when cooked because they will stick together.
  3. Try to keep the bacon tight to the cup but this isn’t crucial as the bacon will shrink a bit.
  4. Lastly, when folding to create the bottom of the cup get as good a fold as possible and as much meat as possible, you will see why in a moment.

Then it is time to throw them in the over, 375 degrees and the time will vary but you’ll want around 20 minutes. You will want to keep an eye on them and make sure they come out crispy as this makes for better structure.

As you can see the folding and bottom of the cups doesn’t stay very well. This is not much of an issue though. What I found was when you put the lettuce and tomato in the cup you don’t need a solid bottom, just no huge hole for them to fall through.

I tested a couple different ways of adding the lettuce and tomato.

B.

BL.

BLT.

BLT with some ranch.

The lettuce and tomato will sit nicely in the little cup and not fall through. The cups are obviously not able to hold liquid so take it easy on the dressing, I went a little overboard here, I recommend a drizzle as things tend to be “over-sauced” anyway. I found that a strip of bacon, lettuce, and two tomatoes is more than a mouth full. So I scaled it back.

And put together.

Again I found that this was alot of food for one bite, but mostly because of the tomato that is a beast until you bite into it. So I modified.

I also found that it was easier to put together in the bacon if the lettuce was ripped into these strips instead one big piece. It also seemed easier to eat.

There you have what I consider the finish product, it was really tasty too. The proportions were just right as everyone knows the bacon is the best part.

Now make a bunch and share them with friends. Enjoy!

  1. jefflesser posted this