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Homemade furikake no. 5: Sweet bacon
I’ve neglected the furikake series for a while, but it’s back!
And what better way to return, than with bacon.
I have bacon on the mind recently for some reason. I’m not overindulging in it, but it’s fun trying to figure out different ways of incorporating bacon in one’s life.
Bacon goes with everything, including rice. It’s salty and bacon-y. I’ve souped it up by adding some Japanese flavors sweet-salty flavors. The result is almost like bacon candy. A little goes a long way.
It’s great sprinkled on just about everything. Besides rice, you could sprinkle it on eggs, vegetables, your tongue…
Sweet-salty bacon furikake
You’ll want to try to select a fairly low fat bacon. A dry-cured one is best. You can also use a cured ham like proscuitto.
- About 150g / 5.25 oz lean bacon
- 1 Tbs. mirin
- 1 Tbs. raw cane sugar (or regular sugar)
- 1/2 Tbs. soy sauce
Chop up the bacon quite finely.
In a large frying pan, sauté the bacon over a low-medium heat until it’s rendered a lot of its fat and is fairly crispy, but not burned.
Drain the bacon on paper towels. Wipe out the pan to get rid of any bacon fat.
Add the other ingredients over a medium heat. Stir until the sugar is melted. Return the bacon and stir around until the liquid is gone.
Let cool completely. Optionally whirl it in a food processor until very finely chopped.
This will keep in the refrigerator for a week or two (if it lasts that long).
Spicy variation: Add a little of our favorite condiment, nanami (shichimi) tohgarashi.
- See more homemade furikake recipes.
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12 comments
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Bacon and Bento?
Just when I thought this Monday couldn’t be more over the top, I find you’ve brilliantly added bacon to furikake. Now I have a reason to Live! — or at least shop for some primo piggy goodness.
BACON!
Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to try this, it looks absolutely scrumptious! It reminds me of Pig Candy - bacon rolled in brown sugar and baked until crisp…mmm….
OMG <3
thank you soo much! because i dont live very close to a japanese food store, its very hard for me to buy furikake, also i cant read any of the labels *-.-
i’m not a big fan of nori either, or very spicy things, so this is absoloutly fantastic! i read both of your blogs frequently and find all this very helpful. thank you!
Furikake + ... fillings?
When using furikake on onigiri, would you use a filling as well? Or would the furikake be considered filling and flavoring enough? Is it taboo to try to do both?
LOVE this blog, by the way. I check daily!
So Good!
This looks so good! It’s something I would love to have with my breakfast. This and rice…maybe a little egg omelet. :)
Slight Problem...
I tried to make this recently, but ended up with the problem that my liquid didn’t all go away…am I not waiting long enough, or is there something I can try?
You have to wait a bit
You have to wait a bit more…it will all evaporate eventually! One problem may be that the bacon you are using is a bit watery (this can be the case with some supermarket brands) so you can try drying it off very well before starting the cooking process.
Really delicious!
I made Onigiri with this Bacon-furikake. I just used the furikake to add flavor to the Onigiri, no filling. Everyone of my family and friends loved it! Especially my boyfriend, becaus he really is into bacon ;) It was really tasty! I’m surely going to make it again.
Thanks for this great recipe!
Fantastic, yet again!
I took a gamble and used a whole pound of bacon - so glad I did, because it tastes heavenly and I’m guessing I’ll use it up within the next 3 days or so making onigiri … It took longer than I expected - I think I spent about 30 min sauteeing the bacon, and then at least another 15 min waiting for the liquid to evaporate. It’s not a dry crispy look like the one in your picture, so I’m wondering about the fat content of the bacon. I used rind on bacon which looked quite lean so I left the rind on to have some fat. Don’t know if it’s because it’s a supermarket brand. That’s actually the best tasting bacon I’ve tried so far and I like that it comes vacuum packed. The ones from outside are usually too salty for me.
It could have as much to do
It could have as much to do with moisture content as with fat content of your bacon. Was there some moisture in the pack it came in? If so, it’s a wet-cured bacon so will take some more time to get crispy. What you can try next time is to blot off as much moisture as possible, and then microwave it for a minute before chopping it up. I’m glad it turned out well in any case though :)
Ha
I do have the other pound to try it on … LOL My sister is gobbling it up and I had to stop her from eating the whole lot so I could have some left for the onigiri. Maybe I’ll experiment somemore and let her eat all of this lot.
Second take
Just a follow-up on my second experiment. I actually oven dried the bacon as I could not find dry cured bacon anywhere, so I got my usual vacuum packed back bacon on sale, and lay it out on two oven trays, single layer (about 1.5 lbs worth). Oven dried it at 70 deg C or 140 deg F for an hour, with the oven door jammed open to allow moisture to escape. I’m not usually a fan of wasting energy cooking especially since dry cured would solve the problem but I really just couldn’t find any. The bacon was dry, almost crisp by the time it had cooled down enough for me to chop it up. It had also shrunk at least 20% from its original size (yeah, and they say wet cured is only allowed 10% brine). It didn’t take too long to get it crispy and lost most of fat in the pan (I cheated and used that to panfry chicken). The soy/mirin/sugar mix also caramelized nicely.
So I’d say, if you use a wet cured bacon it does help to oven dry it. I’ll be doing that for breadcrumbs, dried shrimp, peanuts or anything else I want to slow roast to a crisp in a pan.
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