I was in a rush one day to get some food for dinner. In the
supermarket, I was scanning through their "ready to eat" and "read to
cook" options and found some bacon-wrapped asparagus. It was cheap,
likely met my dietary needs, so I took it home to cook it.
The instructions were easy enough, but this first attempt failed to
impress. The bacon was too soggy, so I extended the cook time but that
dried out the asparagus to a char.
The next time I saw bacon-wrapped asparagus in the store, the bacon was
wrapped in a different way which looked like it would cook better. So I
took the new style home and had a successful meal.
With the original option, the chef wrapped the bacon around the center of
the spears of asparagus like they were tying together a bundle of sticks.
The second option had the bacon wrapped more like a barber pole.
I didn't love the bacon: it tasted a little too gamey and wasn't as
flavorful as the bacon I typically purchase, so I decided to start making
my own bacon-wrapped asparagus. The results are below.
Ingredients
- Bacon, thawed -- See the the "Notes > Selecting Bacon" section for more information
- Asparagus
Tools
- Knife and cutting board
- Baking sheet
- Cooking parchment paper
- Baking rack (as described here)
- Heat-resistant tongs
Instructions
- Start heating the oven to 400 degrees (Convection or conventional is fine; convection will cook a faster, though)
- Prepare the baking sheet
- Line the baking sheet with the parchment paper
- Place the baking rack on top of the parchment paper so that the bacon grease will drip off the bacon
- Rinse and trim the asparagus spears
- Open the package of bacon
- Grab 3 asparagus spears (see "Notes > Sorting Asparagus" for a useful selection technique) and wrap them with bacon
- Start at the tip of the asparagus and wrap the bacon around the spears, overlapping the bacon just slightly (it helps the bacon stay in place)
- Keep the bacon slightly taught: enough to hold the asparagus together but not so tight as to tear
-
Place the wrapped asparagus on top of the baking rack
- Repeat wrapping asparagus spears until you have used up the bacon, used up the asparagus, or used up the space on the baking rack
- Bake in the oven, checking every 5 minutes until the bacon starts to look crispy
- This takes about 20 minutes in my convection oven
- Using the tongs, rotate the spears short-wise so that the uncooked bacon is now facing upward
- Continue baking, checking every 5 minutes until the up-turned bacon is crispy
- This takes an additional 10 minutes in my oven
- Carefully remove the cooked product and place it on plates
- Serve and enjoy!
- I personally enjoy cutting the spears into 1.5- to 2-inch segments
Notes
Selecting Bacon
In the past, I've used Kirkland Signature Bacon from Costco. However, I've also kept my eyes open for different bacon, checking on flavor as my most-important factor followed closely by ingredients and price.
I personally want bacon which has inherent flavor and which doesn't use sugar. In terms of flavor, I have found that humanely-raised bacon tends to taste better. Similarly with Duroc pork, but that is more difficult to find in bacon form.
In my quest for better bacon, I even ran some experiments with Pineapple, who has a much more discerning tongue. I found that if I cooked the KS low-sodium bacon, she would only consume about 2 full slices of bacon (about a quarter of a package) and then she would be done; It just wasn't flavorful or enjoyable for her. But when I cooked better-tasting bacon, then she would eat half of the bacon and would enjoy it. The better-tasing bacon didn't have that underlying gamy, cardboard flavor to it.
So, in the end, my current preferred bacon is Applegate No Sugar Uncured Bacon. I first found it at typical grocery stores, but it was always pretty spendy so I would keep my eye open for sales and then buy a dozen or more at a time. Taking those home, I would freeze them so that they would keep for longer.
But eventually, I found that same brand of bacon at Walmart, but in the freezer section. This version is 9 ounces instead of 8 oz at other grocers (a particular quirk of manufacturers doing business with Walmart), has a better price per ounce, but is difficult to find; It always takes a little patience to find it because I frequent 4 different Walmart locations and not all will carry it and each places it in a different location within the freezer section.
As for that quirk, Walmart requires businesses to always give Walmart the best price for their product. To keep from ever violating that clause of doing business, manufacturers will often just produce a version of their product which is specific to Walmart and is not sold to any other retailers. In this case, it means that we get 9oz of bacon instead of 8oz per package. Too bad I like bacon.
Sorting Asparagus
When producing the bundles of asparagus spears, I like to keep the relative weight of each set the same. If you don't care about equity in size, you can ignore this tip and just grab any 3 spears. But if you want more-equitable bundles, then you might try this approach.
After trimming the asparagus group the spears into roughly 3 categories, according to the diameter of the stalk: small, medium, and large. Once they are in those categories, grab one spear from each category, put them together, and wrap those 3 in a strip of bacon.
If you do not want to sort the spears, you can just eyeball the ends of the spears and grab 3 according to those same categories.
Regardless of the approach, the bundles will end up in roughly equal sizes, making it easier to cook evenly and equally as well as making it harder for people to fight over equitable portions.
As an aside, I do the same when I cook scrambled eggs for Pineapple. Because we purchase pasture raised eggs--anything other kind bothers her digestion--the sizes are not as uniform as conventional eggs. I sort the eggs according to size, and then I take 2 eggs (the largest and the smallest) for scrambling. This makes for roughly equal-sized portions each day I cook them.
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