Your S’mores Are Begging for Bacon

My relationship with s’mores is muddled. Setting them on fire tickles my pyro-bone, but I get frustrated with the cloying sweetness of the marshmallow and questionable Hershey’s chocolate. One Friday evening I was pondering salted meats and it dawned on me: S’mores need bacon.

This is not your average “everything is good with bacon” plug. The sweet-on-sweet flavour profile of s’mores is desperately seeking salt and fat to pull it all into balance. To start the Bacon S’more — S’more Bacon? Still workshopping a title — I prepared a batch of extra crispy bacon. Ensuring the bacon is crisp allows the smoky meat to break apart easily when you bite into it. Chewy bacon is tricky in this arrangement, because you might pull out the whole piece in bite number one. However, if you love the chewy stuff, I suggest ripping the strip into pieces so there’s plenty for each bite.

The final arrangement of ingredients is up to you. I prepared a graham cracker with a piece of chocolate and half a strip of bacon, torn up, on top. Then I put the hot marshmallow on top of the bacon. If you like really gooey chocolate, and want to use the hot marshmallow to help warm up the bar, you could switch the placement and save the bacon for last. Heat your marshmallow however you please, and add it to the chocolate and bacon. Add the second half of the graham cracker and give it a press.

The melty chocolate and sticky marshmallow keep the bacon in place, and the classic graham cracker brings much needed textural contrast, and a mild honey flavour. And the bacon? It’s a s’more phenomenon. One that excites your palate with salty and smoky flavours. Salty bacon nuggets and dripping chocolate make for an absurd, but delicious, giddy kind of mess.

The only change I would make next time (so, in 20 minutes) is I would decrease the chocolate and increase my bacon. This isn’t too surprising, since I like a more balanced snack anyway, and I wanted to taste more salt and smoke. Maybe a double marshmallow is more your style. Experiment with different ratios to see what you like. The unspoken rule of s’mores is that you should always make more than one.

Bacon You For S’more

Ingredients:

• 2 strips of bacon, cooked crispy
• 4 jumbo marshmallows
• 4-8 squares of chocolate
• 4 graham crackers, broken in half

Arrange four graham cracker halves on a plate. Top one with a chocolate square. Rip up half a strip of bacon and lay the pieces on top of the chocolate. Heat a marshmallow and lay it on top of the chocolate and bacon. Top with another half of a graham cracker and press. Repeat this to get four s’mores.