Bourbon Street Bacon Jam

I saw this really cool idea for Deviled Eggs with Bacon Jam and Pancetta. I really wanted to give it a try but didn’t have time to order the Bacon Jam online. I thought about it a while and decided it would be fun to try and make a version using bourbon, kind of a bourbon street chicken inspired version. So I adapted our Bourbon Chicken recipe and came up with what I am calling Bourbon Street Bacon Jam.

It doesn’t look all that appealing (kind of like an alien sea slug). But it is quite tasty as a condiment. It does go well with Deviled Eggs. I’m looking forward to trying it on other things, Burgers come to mind.

1 pound smoked bacon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
4 ounces soy sauce
2 tablespoons minced onion
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
3/8 cup bourbon
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 onion, diced

First fry the bacon until crisp and then crumbled it.

Next using 2 tablespoons of reserved bacon grease caramelized the onion

Place everything in a blender, except for enough bacon crumbles to use as garnish, and process until smooth

Pour the mixture was  back into the frying pan and reduced until it was the desired thickness.

Taste test it and adjust as needed. I found this batch was a bit salty and just a little bitter so I added.

1/2 cup white sugar (I ran out of brown sugar)
1/4 cup bourbon
3/8 cup water

After adjusting I cooked it down just to evaporate the alcohol.

Rather than reduce it further, I was afraid that would just re-concentrate the salt, I decided to thicken it with a bit of cornstarch. I simply mixed up a slurry of 1 tablespoon each of water and cornstarch added it the mixture and heated until it thickened.

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