Bacon Wrapped Potato Experiment

We've been married long enough that coming up with a new family favourite is rather difficult sometimes. I was watching the food channel the other night and Michael Smith showed a bacon wrapped potato dish. My immediate thought was I could do that and I could take it beyond what he did. His dish was only bacon and potatoes. So I set about experimenting and this is what I came up with. Make sure you read my notes as I do think this can still be improved on.

Lined Pie Pan

I honestly had a lot of problems with this step even though Michael Smith made it look so easy. The bacon just would not co-operate! Once I got the bacon somewhat in a radiated fashion I decided to squish the centre as it seemed too thick. So I really just used my fist and pounded the centre a little to flatten. Then I used my fingers to kind of mush the flatten bacon out a bit towards the edges. This is kind of messy as the bacon strips drape over the outside of the pan but that is for a reason as explained later.

Potatoes with Spices

The potatoes were cut with a mandolin to ensure even slices. This worked very nicely. However, on Michael Smith's segment he showed only bacon and potatoes. Now, we just couldn't have only bacon and potatoes! So I sprinkled on a little Old Bay Seasoning then got the idea to add extra sharp cheddar cheese as a layer. I used three layers of cut potatoes for the filling.

Wrapped

Once the potato and cheese filling was in place it was time to draw the draped over pices of bacon strips to seal the top. Again I had a few problems with this so resorted to brute force. I again used my fist to pound the centre part of the bacon and fingers to mush the bacon towards the sides. This created a top bacon crust for the dish. The dish was baked at 350 degrees farenheit until the top bacon was slightly crispy.


Baked

The result at first was a lot of bacon grease so I used a couple of large egg flippers to remove the finished dish from the baking pan to drain. I think this was a necessity even though I did not see Michael Smith do this. He likely did because if you see the amount of grease that is your first instinct. I let the baked dish drain for about five minutes then it was ready for cutting.

Cut

I cut the dish into wedge pie like shapes. The resulting wedges were served along with other vegetables for the main course. This dish still needs a little tweaking. My husband commented that it was almost too much bacon. I noticed that the Old Bay Seasoning and even cheese flavours were not noticeable. Not that you want a distinct seasoning or cheese flavour for this type of dish but there wasn't even a hint of either.

I think peppering the bacon would help with the overall flavour. I also think that this dish would lend itself well to adding spinach as one of the layers. So this will be a dish I play around with a few more times. I'm thinking instead of using a round pie pan to use a square baking dish and half the bacon. That would solve the problem of radiating the bacon. But I have a few other ideas where I would like to take this dish so will post more later. I think this dish will freeze well so froze a wedge as a test. Sure enough, no problems.

I'm still developing this recipe so am making notes in my kitchen journal. It is a good way to keep track of what you did to a recipe or how you create a recipe. A kitchen jounal can be a valuable asset later when trying to recreate a modified recipe or a new one and only just created recipe.

Enjoy!