A chef has revealed his ‘favourite’ method for cooking bacon that elevates its taste ‘even further’. In a YouTube video entitled “How Nick DiGiovanni Makes His Perfect Breakfast Sandwich: Every Choice, Every Step,” American chef and television personality Nick DiGiovanni demonstrates how to prepare flavoursome bacon that can be enjoyed alone or as part of a breakfast sandwich.
Nicholas Channing DiGiovanni holds several food-related Guinness World Records. The 29-year-old previously served as a line cook at Waypoint restaurant in Cambridge while studying at Harvard.
In the YouTube video, Nicholas starts by advising that bacon ought only to be prepared in the oven. He told viewers: “Make sure to never cook your bacon in a pan, it makes a mess, it doesn’t cook evenly.”
He continued: “Do yourself a favour and throw it on a baking tray and stick it in the oven.” The chef, who boasts over 25 million followers across social media platforms, noted that while he typically uses egg yolk as a sauce when preparing a breakfast sandwich, on this occasion, he recommends maple syrup.
“When I’m looking at the sauce in a breakfast sandwich, I want something that’s nice and well-balanced, something with a little bit of acidity, maybe with a few spices that you want in there,” he explained. “I happen to be a purist when it comes to my breakfast sandwiches, and I’m not going to be using a sauce today; instead, maple syrup.” Demonstrating his method for cooking bacon with maple syrup, he holds up a tray of cooked bacon and says: “So this bacon is cooked, but it’s missing something.”
He adds: “I’m gonna add a bit of maple syrup to a bowl, then over my bacon”. He proceeds to brush some maple syrup over each bacon rasher, applying just enough “so that you get that nice light and shiny coating over the top”.
The next ingredient he uses to season the bacon is sugar. “I’ll also add a nice little pinch of brown sugar,” he said. “Anytime you add sugar to something like this that you’re going to put in the oven or heat, it’s going to caramelise and give that incredible flavour.”
To elevate the flavour of his bacon even further, the chef then incorporates one fruit many likely wouldn’t consider pairing with bacon. “To finish, one of my favourite ingredients to use when cooking is just a little bit of lemon zest,” Nick says. “This will give a little bit of acidity.”
Near the conclusion of the video, he presents viewers with a side-by-side comparison of plain cooked bacon and cooked bacon topped with maple syrup, brown sugar and lemon zest. “Check out the difference between this normal bacon that I’ve cooked without anything on top and then this one over here, which has that maple glaze on top with a little bit of brown sugar and lemon zest,” he said.
“This maple-glazed bacon is just so much better looking, so much more flavourful. Don’t get me wrong, regular bacon is good, but this is better.”