I apologize in advance to my vegetarian friends for defiling a usually innocent childhood treat. For yes a pig died and jumped into this ice cream, but at least it died to be in something so epic!
Since bacon is the candy of meats it only seemed fitting to be in ice cream- AND since it was my birthday and I had a bacon theme for the food- then yeah it had to happen! (I also didn't wanna bake a cake since I don't have central AC) 80% of the time I am eating all healthy and shit, loving my veggies but I go to extremes and then things like this happen and since it was my birthday, it's totally justifiable, right?!
So I thought about how to properly pay homage to the king of cured meats and what would compliment it. I never got to brown butter or even try browned butter, but I liked the idea of the caramel notes it would bring and how that intensity of sweet would contrast with the salty. To further drive this home I used brown sugar for most of the sweetness because it goes with the southern roots and the molasses added to brown sugar perfectly goes with most meats and rubs already. This all sounds fancy, but most of this is deeply intuitive, I am somehow able to taste something before I make it. So that is how my crazy train brain just works.
So basically this ice cream is a heart attack waiting to happen, but you will enjoy your last few breaths at least. You may enjoy it so much that you will make a vat of it to bathe in and roll around in to eat your way out of. Make this and eat responsibly. A little goes a loooong way!
What you need
3 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 3/4 cup milk
(reserve 1-2 tablespoons of milk to mix with corn starch)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (can sub with vanilla extract)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon rendered bacon fat (eeek I know, I'm sooooo soooo bad)
3 slices of bacon cooked crisp and cut into tiny bits (I used Trader Joe's Black Forest Bacon)
How to make it
1- Whisk together cornstarch and 1-2 tablespoons of your milk, set aside.
2- Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan on medium heat, I recommend using a stainless steel pan so you can see the butter turn brown. Here is a great brown butter tutorial!
3- Remove the butter from heat once it's browned, add in your brown sugar and let is dissolve into that magical brown butter.
4- Place pot back on medium heat whisking in your heavy cream,milk, and vanilla bean paste.
5- Once it comes to a boil remove from heat and whisk in cornstarch and milk mixture.
6- Place back on heat and add the rendered bacon fat. Stir well until slightly thickened. (enough to coat spoon once removed)
7- Place in fridge overnight with the slices of bacon to infused it. (Don't chop up the bacon just yet, it will get stuck when the ice cream is churning.
8- Remove bacon slices and churn ice cream as instructed by ice cream maker
9- Add chopped up bacon pieces (I used food processor)
10- Freeze to set and serve!
