A while ago, I was extolling the virtues of my homemade tomato jam to one of my coworkers, and he came back with a description of his homemade bacon jam.
Of course, I had to try making my own.
I found a recipe on The Kitchn that involved bacon, onion, maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and Worcestershire (and shallots, but I left those out). I made two-thirds of the recipe, since my package of uncured bacon from ButcherBox was 10 oz and the recipe called for a pound of bacon. I got everything ready to simmer before I went upstairs to supervise my son’s bath and bedtime routine, and enjoyed the sweet scent of bacon as we did our thing. When I came back downstairs after lights out (having already checked on it a couple of times), I was worried that I’d over cooked it — the jam was a deep mahogany. As it turns out, it was damn near perfect, and yielded about a cup and a half of deliciousness after I hit it with the immersion blender.
It’s more of a reduction than a jam, per se, since it’s not really thickened… but that’s just semantics.
Whatever it is, it’s delicious, and I’m glad my coworker unwittingly put me up to it.