Bacon Pancakes

After watching Man Vs Food – Season 3, Episode 2 where host Adam Richman goes to The Buff Restaurant in Boulder Colorado – I decided that bacon in pancakes was a really really good idea. There were a couple of things that I took away from the episode:

• The bacon was first baked, not fried.
• The pancakes were semi-cooked before pieces of bacon were pressed into them.
• It was all then topped with a ‘basted egg’ which, from what I could gather, was a part poached, part steamed sunny side up egg. 

So I decided to do a little experiment. I laid some bacon out on a tray, and put them in the oven. While that was in there, I decided to fry some bacon.

The fried bacon turned out curly, with more extreme caramelization.

The baked bacon seemed more evenly browned, and turned out flat pieces that were more easily pressed into the pancakes, and prevented the batter overspill that happened with the curly bacon. It’s all personal preference, really.

The pancakes used in the show were, I think, buttermilk pancakes. I used my own recipe for pancakes, but feel free to use whichever one you want.

Breakfast Pancakes:

1 cup self raising flour (or one cup plain with a teaspoon of both baking powder and baking soda)
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk

Mix all the ingredients together, being careful not to overmix. Heat a pan to medium and lightly coat with oil. Ladle the mixture into the pan. When bubbles start appearing and the pancakes start setting, place cooked pieces of bacon onto the still-slightly-runny batter. Flip the pancakes.

Serve with maple syrup.

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The final part of this awesome breakfast dish is, of course, the basted eggs. For this, you need a frying pan, a lid, egg, water, and a little bit of oil.

Basted Eggs

Eggs
Water

Preheat a lightly oiled pan to medium heat. Use butter for an extra richness. Crack an egg (or two!) into the pan. As the whites start to set, add about a teaspoon of water, and cover with the lid. I used a glass lid, which allows me to monitor the eggs, but my stove’s medium heat has my eggs done in about 30 seconds. This does take a little bit of trial and error, but it does pay off in the end.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s the money shot.

The most perfectly runny, silky eggs ever.

Well worth the effort. =)