Candied Bacon Black Walnut Brittle
Bacon, black walnuts, and hard-cracked sugar. Made at home, carried as a snack.
- calories
- 260
- weight
- 1.8 oz
- cal / oz
- 144
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Dessert
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Day hike
- Winter / snow
- Bikepacking
- Gluten free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Thick cut bacon | 6 strips | |
|---|---|---|
| Brown sugar | 1/4 cup | for the bacon, not the brittle |
| Cayenne pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Granulated sugar | 1 1/2 cups | |
| Light corn syrup | 1/2 cup | keeps the sugar from crystallizing |
| Water | 1/2 cup | |
| Bourbon | 2 tbsp | |
| Black walnuts, toasted | 1 1/2 cups | English walnuts work, black ones taste like nothing else |
| Unsalted butter | 2 tbsp | |
| Baking soda | 1 tsp | |
| Coarse salt | for sprinkling |
Method
- At home: heat the oven to 400F. Lay the bacon on a rack over a sheet pan. Mix the cayenne into the brown sugar and dust both sides of every strip.
- Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until the fat has rendered and the sugar has gone dark and sticky. Cool on the rack, then chop into rough pieces.
- Line a sheet pan with parchment or a silicone mat and set it next to the stove. Once the sugar goes, there is no time to look for things.
- Combine the granulated sugar, corn syrup, water, and bourbon in a heavy pot. Stir until the sugar is wet, then stop stirring. Clip on a thermometer.
- Boil to 300F. This takes a while and then happens fast. Molten sugar sticks to skin and keeps burning, so long sleeves and closed shoes.
- Off the heat, stir in the butter, walnuts, and chopped bacon, then the baking soda. It will foam up pale. Work quickly.
- Pour onto the pan and spread thin with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle with coarse salt.
- Cool an hour, then break into pieces. Store in a sealed tin until it is time to pack.
This is home-kitchen work that produces trail food, not a camp recipe. Brittle is one of the better things to carry: sugar at 300F holds essentially no water, so it does not stale, mold, or care about heat until it starts to soften around body temperature. The bacon is rendered dry and then locked in sugar, which is what makes a pork product shelf-stable in a pack for a week.
Two things matter for the texture. The corn syrup interferes with crystal formation, so the finished candy is glassy instead of grainy. The baking soda hits the hot sugar and throws off carbon dioxide, foaming it full of tiny bubbles — that is what makes it snap instead of shatter your teeth. Toast the walnuts first; raw ones go soft in the candy and taste flat.
Packing
Break into pieces no bigger than two fingers and layer them in a rigid container or a hard-sided food jar. A soft bag turns brittle into sugar dust by day two. In heat it will sweat and stick together, so parchment between layers helps.
Variations
- Skip the bourbon and add another 2 tbsp water. The alcohol cooks off anyway; the flavor is mostly barrel.
- Pecans instead of walnuts, if black walnuts are hard to find.
- Leave the bacon out for a plain nut brittle. Add another 1/2 tsp salt to make up for it.
https://realtree.com/timber-2-table/recipes/candied-bacon-walnut-brittle