Experimenting with Bacon

Sundays are usually are “big meal” of the week, but today I really hadn’t planned anything and not a lot of options to work with: bok choy, mushrooms and steak-seasoned thick-cut bacon. Clearly, a little experimentation was in order.

I’d had grilled boc choy before and it was amazing! And of course everything tastes better with bacon, right? So I combined the two, wrapping a bacon strip around a piece of bok choy and pinned it with a toothpick. Simple.

For the mushrooms, I dug around in the freezer and came up with ½ pound of ground beef. I’d packaged it to use in spaghetti sauce, but we hadn’t eaten spaghetti in months, and being on a low carb diet, we had no plans to start. I combined the ground
beef with a can of Italian style diced tomatoes, a ½ tub of tomato and basil flavored Philadelphia Cooking Cream. I pulled the stems out of the mushrooms and scrubbed down the heads. Once the meat was brown, I drained the excess liquid, turned off the burner and stirred in the cooking cream. I mixed the ingredients together and spooned the mixture into the mushroom caps. And then I wrapped them in bacon as well.

John was out showing, so grilling was out. I opted for broiling instead. I broiled on high, turning every few minutes until the bacon was thorough cooked – and crisp. (John doesn’t like soggy bacon.)

The results were… mixed. The mushroom caps were amazing. Rich and flavorful! But because they were so rich, we couldn’t eat but a couple. This would make a great appetizer. I might try it again with Italian sausage.

The boc choy... that was a miss. The bacon overpowered the delicate taste of the Chinese cabbage. The grease from the bacon also made the bok choy soggy and tough to chew. In theory it sounded really good. I’m wondering if the results would have been different had they been grilled.

If you try out either one of these ideas, let me know your results.