In this episode of Old School Eats, host Derek Fournier cooks up a storm with three irresistible sandwiches. From bacon jam to brulee grilled cheese, follow along as he shares his creative and classic takes on these mouthwatering recipes.
– Learn how to make bacon jam with a blend of bourbon, maple syrup, smoked paprika, and cayenne pepper.
– Watch Derek tackle three unique sandwiches: candied croissant grilled cheese, creme brulee grilled cheese, and a croissant-based patty melt.
– Discover the secrets to perfectly caramelized brulee topping on grilled cheese.
– See Derek’s process for making a mayonnaise-based burger sauce with chipotles in adobo sauce.
– Get tips on using a griddle for optimal cheese melting and sandwich toasting techniques.
Big Shout Outs to the following:
The Naughty Fork
https://www.instagram.com/thenaughtyfork/?e=10e72484-e138-4a1c-98ff-0d35529489c8&g=5
Candied Croissant Grilled Cheese
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C49DYKSRp4M/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Creme Brulé Grilled Cheese
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C27oLDqOKWO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Russel J Carter – https://www.instagram.com/russelljcarter/
Croissant Patty Melt
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7jPzlTOUy-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Dave from Hector’s Smoke House https://www.youtube.com/@HectorsSmokeHouse
Bacon Jam
Timestamps:
00:00 Preparing bacon jam, French cuisine experimentation, multitasking.
04:03 Dense croissants become grilled cheese sandwiches.
09:07 Cooking with induction cooktop, adding chili oil.
12:09 Attempting a brioche slice for French bread.
15:51 Impromptu cooking with plenty of sugar.
17:44 Molten sugar cooled, crunch in cross-section.
19:57 Using gouda croissants for bacon patty melt.
23:49 Enjoying melting cheesy croissants and smashing burgers.
27:38 Burger sauce dilemma, experimentation with unconventional lube.
31:45 Get creative with classic grilled cheese variations.
33:19 Cooking bacon jam, struggle with cast iron.
37:20 Using bacon jam, discussing silicone kitchen tools.
welcome back to Old School Eads I’m Derek old school forier and today we’re going to be doing a combination of sandwiches inside it’s going to be three sandwiches from the very very simple to the more complicated hope you enjoy it here in Old School eats [Music] like we mentioned we’re going to be making some sandwiches today I want to thank our subscribers I was talking to my you know dear friend and and video man and producer Malcolm we’ve got to the point now of the channel where people subscribe even when I don’t produce stuff which is really cool I thought I’d have about 10 people who watch this Channel and we’re almost to 300 so thanks to everyone who watches these videos in Florida here I have talked about how hot it is if you’re from Florida you can relate if you’re not just realize however hot you think it is it’s 10 times that hot so my family and I decided we’re going to try and figure out some things to pull in from the Palace and still do things on The Griddle so I got an electric griddle and I figured what better to do for a quick video for you guys than some sort of different themes on grilled cheeses but I can’t do anything super basic so the last sandwich we’re going to do today is going to be a patty melt on a croissant as bread and I will link all of the Instagram Inspirations that I got from these uh in the description below but on that patty melt we’re going to do a bacon Jam so you’ll see there’s stuff all over the kitchen this is the stuff for the bacon Jam we’re going to put together a terrific bacon Jam that’ll cook for an hour and then we’re going to do three sandwiches we’re going to do a honey toasted smashed croissant grilled cheese with chili oil that’s going to be the first one the second one is going to be a creme brulee grilled cheese which I’ve never had a Creme Brule grilled cheese it sounded delicious I like crem Boule I like grilled cheeses sound like a great combination and then the third is going to be that croissant based patty melt with bacon jam and a Chipotle pepper ioli and that’s going to be the sort of cudar uh which I think means the best one but I don’t really speak French by the way the French folks are going to be pissed cuz I’m going to be crushing the hell out of some croissants but I bet they’re going to be delicious while it’s not the first thing we really need to assemble these sandwiches the longest uh pole in the tent is the bacon Jam so we’re going to get the bacon Jam going and then I’m going to attempt to multitask which I am usually good at but when it comes to cooking I often suck at we’re going to attempt a new experiment with hyperlapse to have that going and maybe we’ll put that into the video I don’t know how I’m going to do it but we’re going to make a bacon jam and it starts with some diced bacon I’ve got some Maple cured bacon that I got from the store today and I’ve got a new cooking area set up over here on this side of the kitchen we’re going to need to render this bacon down get that going and as that cooks down you guys know how to render bacon there’s no mystery to this but we’re going to take that down and once the bacon renders down we’re going to pull some some of that Bacon Fat out it’s delicious I actually save it filter it and use it for other cooking then we’re going to use the onions that I’ve already diced which is a vidalia onion little sweeter uh with a bunch of other ingredients that will go through to create an incredibly delicious bacon Jam that can go in a burger or as a gentleman whose recipe I am largely co-opting mentioned you can put on potatoes you can put on a cracker in theory you can put in your hand and eat it cuz bacon Jam is delicious so we’re going to go ahead and get this bacon rendering down and then start adding our other ingredients so the the first sandwich we’re actually going to assemble and if I’m worth a with cap cut the first one you’ll actually be seeing is a candied croissant grilled cheese and this comes by way of the naughty Fork on Instagram great Instagram follow if you’re not following her make sure you do uh it probably helps that she’s also exceptionally attractive and gets a lot of followers but she makes ridiculously fat food that there’s no way she could consume that much of but regardless it starts with a croissant I went to our local Publix which if you don’t have Publix I’m very sorry for you got a couple of croissant here they actually were just being made and this is the first thing that will piss the French off we are now going to take the croissant and smash the out of it the idea here being to get it very dense and big enough to be an actual grilled cheese sandwich now I have never been accused of being a baker or anything resembling a baker even though the last name forier actually does mean Baker fun fact uh but I think that’s probably flat enough we’re going to need two of them because it takes two to make this sandwich so I’m going to roll these guys out as ineptly as I can and then we’re going to move over to The Griddle which I will explain though griddles don’t take a lot of explanation and show you what we’re going to do by cooking these up on the griddle with some butter and some honey to make them even more decadent as we assemble this sandwich I think the are probably fine good little never hurt anybody so now we have our two pieces of bread the two croissants we’re going to go over the griddle in a minute fry them up with some honey and some butter and we’re going to make a grilled cheese it’s really pretty straightforward we’re now over at the electric cooktop The Griddle that I mentioned this is a presto tilt and drain I went super fancy the idea being we’re out of the elements and we’re here in the kitchen it’s got up to temperature I’ve got it set to just about 3 25 I did test this this isn’t a product review you’re going to get hotter towards the back colder towards the front that’s the way griddles kind of work this one uh has a coating so they tell you to be a little uh careful with it debate number one do you do butter on or do you butter the bread or do you use mayonnaise or do you use ghee I use butter I use butter on uh I don’t butter the bread because my wife does not keep our butter outside on the counter so that it’s spreadable these are all choices that you get to make and it’s the wonderful thing about being free is you can make the call I like butter like this cuz then I can get plenty of butter on it can make sure that I’m getting a good contact now you may say well where’s the honey well I’m going to get a little toast on this side then I’m going to put some honey on it and then I’m going to flip it but I want to get the first side going now we also need to use a heavier spatula so I’m using my outdoor spatulas I’m going to press this son of a down because I want to get it nice and crispy almost like a Smash Burger except it’s not a Smash Burger now you may have heard a little crack there I wonder if I broke my griddle I don’t know I don’t think so I am swole but not that swole so we’re going to get that going we’re going to get this toasting we’re going to flip it over get some honey going and then we’re going to assemble our grilled cheese okay we’re back we’ve let this toast a little bit on this side we’re going to hit a little bit of Honey on this side I’m using just some basic pure unfiltered honey one could use Mike’s hot honey but I’m putting chili oil on the inside so I don’t want double up I will be bringing this back for the bacon Jam though so we’re going to get a little bit of Honey on here don’t have to be crazy you want that sweetness the Publix locally used to do a honey butter pressed Cuban which was delicious and I don’t know why I didn’t continue the concept of honey and butter so as you see I’m put a little bit more butter down because butter never hurt anyone except for all of us that killed with heart attacks get that guy down and don’t do what I did always flip away from yourself so you don’t splatter it on yourself fortunately I’ve got my wonderful little apron going to get these down here do another press risk breaking my griddle again but so far it seems to be solid at this point we can start assembling because I’m going to want the cheese to have time to melt I am as basic a as it comes with grilled cheese and I’m going to use a lot of variety in this one I’m going to use both the Americans white and yellow yes that’s dumb but I didn’t have any other cheese for this one and I wanted to be special on the other one so I’m going to let these toast a little bit more I’m going to let this guy toast a little bit more as well I really should have a dome of some sort so I’m going to go see if I’ve got one of those but if not your cheese will melt we’ll get it going if we were doing this outside I have a giant Blackstone Dome that’s designed for this it’s too big for this griddle and I don’t have a small Dome and all of my pot lids are probably to actually oh hell we actually had one I was going to use this really cool Bowl my buddy malcol came up with the idea but we don’t need to do that we’ll use this I’m going to hit with a little bit of water on the griddle get some steam in there and get that cheese to melt so we got our chili oil here I’m hoping malcol can get in here you got to make sure you stir this up you got oil at the top and then the chili on the bottom this is sort of a mid- grade not super spicy maybe you can see it over here at the light um so we got our Dome doing its job which is great we got a great melt going on here with induction cooktops if I put that on the cook top it would start bitching at me so I’ll put it over there going to drizzle some of this chili oil on here it’s not super spicy but I want enough spice to sort of counteract the uh honey we need to get that guy on there Square that’s hot in case you’re wondering now I’m going to use a metal one to give a cut and I’m going to cover it up one more time and then we’re going to be done a little bit more water get a little more steam in there and then we we should be done and ready to taste I’m try and get this off I’m not giving up on any of that cheese by the way put that over there on this griddle one of the nice things if nothing one comes back up to the griddle the advantage of this material is it is super easy to clean we just kind of scoop that down into the grease trap if you want to I’m going to actually use a paper towel in a second but so far griddle is working great let’s see what this sandwich is all about first sandwich of the day is the candied croissant grilled cheese and I had my little notes holy at the naughty Fork on Instagram see if we get that cheese pull holy that’s hot oh I didn’t get a cheese pull but a croissant pull all right let’s give it a taste oh it’s hot holy oh boy this is just as fat as it looks in case you’re wondering the honey because it has a lot of sugar in it got really really hot so when you’re doing this at home don’t do what I did and shove it in your mouth but I’m going to tell you this this thing is ridiculously good and yes I’m going to go back in for another bite and now that it’s not scorching my mouth it’s far more enjoyable I’m here to tell you I wasn’t sold on the chili oil cuz I tasted it by itself you need it it counteracts the Honey I did the honey only on one side I think we could have done honey on both sides and it would have been baller uh I think it’s delicious so sandwich one in the books candied croissant grilled cheese naughty Fork you’re a baller all right sandwich number two is a creme brulee grilled cheese once again playing with Sweetness in a grilled cheese uh the recommended bread was Hala and I got to go find the IG handle for this cuz I don’t want to steal anyone’s ideas it wasn’t a naughty Fork but I couldn’t find holla at Publix but they had this Brios roll which looked very similar I’m a huge fan of BIOS I’m not notorious for my bakery skills as I said before or even cutting bread but we’re going to give it a shot let’s see how good this knife works it seems to work much like a knife it’s much like a knife all right so we’re going to give ourselves a pretty thick slice because the idea here is we’re almost creating a French bread or french toast rather that a grilled cheese is going to sit on and then we’re going to Brule the Top If I don’t cut my fingertip off while making these slices so we got two really delicious looking holy cow uh pieces of Brios we’re going to prep these guys up get them going and then we’re going to make a grilled cheese out of it so we’re back over to the Presto griddle it’s up to about 320° we’ll throw some butter on here and for this Bru Aid grilled cheese we have our wonderful R bread and if I haven’t already pissed people off enough we’re kind of doing a french toast treatment instead of making my own sweet cream which I certainly could have done I’m going to use coffee creamer in this case French vanilla you may be just a gas that I would do such a thing relax calm down it’s really not that big a deal if you don’t want to do it this way don’t do it this way you could also actually make a French toast batter or whatever the hell you call it with a little bit of egg in it I just don’t think you need that for the sandwich so I’m going to go ahead and get this butter to the point where I want it create enough space on The Griddle for both of the or for the piece of bread the assembly for this one seems to be the trick and I actually think this is the naughty Fork by the way so I think this is her as well but I’m going to drizzle a little bit of this on the bio not a lot you just want a hint I’m going to bring it over to the griddle get that thing going now we learned from the first sandwich but I didn’t give enough time for the cheese to melt those eagle eyes out there amongst you notice that and are probably about to put it in the comments which I would welcome because I’d like some comments on my post so if you’re watching and enjoying it please comment tell me I’m full of tell me you like the food whatever you want to tell me we’re going with white American cuz that’s what I like we’re going to go with some Brie and then bread is smaller than her Hollow was so I don’t think I can actually use all three slices of that I don’t think even I am that fat and then I’m using some shredded cheddar that I shred myself for all the reasons that everyone shreds their own cheddar you don’t get the the caking agents in there so it melts I used a really fine shred get that right on top if you use the larger shred I don’t think you’ll get the Melt that we need for this so we’re going to let this go for a little while while I’m going to use the pan that we talked about before because it needs the height to get this cheese to melt some before we top it put some sweet cream on it flip this guy over and then we do the brulee piece so that’ll be next so I was able to lid it up and I used actually a uh an ice cube rather than water on this one now I’m going to put my top piece of bread on here going to come back in with a little bit more of this cream you may say a little bit yeah don’t worry about it mess you never hurt anybody I’m here to tell you that looks pretty good we’re going to let that cook finish off the cheese I don’t think I’m going to have to do anything to make that cheese melt because of what we did with the Dome earlier if we needed a taller Dome we would have used the pan that we deployed going to let that finish off and then we’re going to go to the Brule station never a dull moment we’ve got our brulee grilled cheese over here on the board uh I’m of course throwing caution to the wind I’ve not done a test cook of this I did look up to see what the right sugar was for brulee there seems to be a lot of discuss uh discussion around that but granulated basic bit sugar seems to be the winner so that fortunately I have plenty of so we’re going to deploy that in some significant quantity as was described because once we get on there we kind of shake it around make it a little more even but if any of you have had cremet which I’m going to assume many of you have the next part is going to appeal to the pyromaniacs I’ve got my torch never done this before first time ever on this video I think what I’m learning is that a thinner layer works better because I’m braying the top part and not getting to the bottom part I don’t want to burn it which I’m clearly doing some of we’ll see this will be fun oh hey now got that a little toasty I don’t know that it’s going to be bad though it doesn’t smell burnt it just looks like it’s burnt you guys who know how to do this stuff please do let me know what I’ve done wrong but we’ll let that go and let it Harden it smells freaking ridiculous oh my God can you smell that Malcolm over there oh my gosh first attempt at the brulee grilled cheese we’re going to let that harden up then we’ll cut it and give it a taste okay we’re back with our brulee grilled cheese we’re about to cut into it uh the molten sugar has cooled to a point where I don’t think I’m going to burn the roof of my mouth like I did on our first taste test and what I’m hoping is I get a nice crunch when I cut through here we’re using a big old chef knife not a soku as my friend Malcolm said we should have used used and I don’t even know what that is he’s way cooler than I am so let’s give this thing a cut see how it works well that was more squish than I wanted but you heard the crunch there’s your cross-section we got good melt the smell is ridiculous this is naughty fork and were I not happily and legally married and in an alternate universe would it would have mattered I would be pursuing naughty Fork because if she cooks like this not only is she stunning but holy this is delicious now this is the part that looked a little bit burnt I need to for science see if it’s bad nope it’s not bad you know what it tastes like caramel you know why cuz that’s what sugar is it’s a little overdone but I’m not mad at it that Brie good Lord in heaven you know what it tastes like it tastes like French toast with cremet on top and a bunch of delicious cheese in the middle cuz that’s what it is this sandwich is ludicrous big shout out to the naughty Fork you guys should definitely try it we will enjoy eating this while we prepare for the third sandwich on this video which is our patty melt on croissant I’ve got a little twist for you all right for our third sandwich of the day and actually Malcolm andiz lunch though we have been noshing on the other sandwiches uh like fat guys would they’re right over my shoulder as you can see we’re going to make some Smash Burgers we’re going to do them as a patty melt and we’re going to do them on a croissant we’re going to do them with a bacon G that you’ve seen me put together and when I went to get croissants at our local Publix you saw the croissants are relatively small they’re not the cool like super fancy big gigantic ones you get and I didn’t want to go to another store but then as I was wandering around the bakery I found these goua cheese croissants what could be wrong with that they’re also bigger so they hold more meat so we’re going to be making our bread or the patty melt out of these Smash down on the on the griddle but first we’re going to prep our SM Burgers I’ve got steakhous Elite brisket Burgers they are two half PB burgers that I’ve broken into four4 PB balls just going to season them with my Cosmo Q SBG then they’ll be ready and then we’re going to show you how I make a quick burger sauce uh Allah my friend Sam the cooking guy he’s not really my friend I don’t know him I wish I knew him cuz I love his show but he has encouraged me to make sauces for things like this and so I’m going to put a little sauce together then we’ll get over to the griddle where I’ll show you an interesting little uh feature that it had has and then we will get to cooking so for our burger sauce we’re going to go with just a mayonnaise based sauce but I hate pickles I hate pickles in pickle form I hate pickles in Cho form I hate pickles in relish form and I hate pickle juice so also the health Chick-fil-A cuz they brine their and pickle juice I’m sure there’s a good reason to use pickle juice I just hate pickles so I’m not going to use it I’m going to use some mayonnaise some yellow mustard for a little bit of bite and what I love are these Chipotles and Adobo sauce I’m just going to take some of the goo out of that not the actual Peppers I’m not trying to kill anybody but that smokey profile is going to provide sort of the the nice little bind that I want so I take about probably tablespoon two big heavy teaspoons cuz it’s just two burgers that we’re making and this is all eyeball make sure you shake your mustard otherwise you get mustard goo that water that’s in there it’s terrible you don’t want too much mustard cuz mustard can ruin any party and then I’m just going to use my my spoon to get just the sauce I think that’s probably enough it’s surprisingly potent and I may have gone heavy in the mustard like I warned you not to do judging by the color we’ll find out in a second though once it’s all combined yep too much mustard or one could alternatively think not enough Chipotle I like the color better if I wasn’t making for this for someone who’s essentially family I would use something other than my finger yeah that’s what I want there’s our sauce I’m going to put that in the fridge let it get a little bit thicker and then we’re going to get to the rest of the cooking we’re back back over to The Griddle I want to show you a little feature of this griddle not that I’m sponsored by them nor am I looking for sponsorship but this one has the Tilt and drain feature what that means is we’re flat here but if I pull these little bat wings out it tilts this down so the grease will run down into this grease trap it’s actually a very nice feature so here we go some butter on here yes I just licked the butter off my hands I’m gone to the metal spatula because I need may not be the greatest thing to use on this surface to be honest but we’ll get through it we have made a game time decision to just toast the bottom of these croissants because the top was so sort of Flowery we don’t want to break that look they really look I don’t know if Malcolm can get a view of that but they look really nice over here I know this is supposed to be like a patty melt and maybe this a bad idea I don’t know it’s the first time we’ve done it but right now I’m really enjoying smashing these cheesy croissants in this butter going to get a nice little toast on those get them off to the side and then we’re going to do our Smash Burgers which I’ve also tried to make into more of this shape we’ll see how well that works as I cook it we’ll get the cheese on there get them stacked melted reassembled put it back over and give it a taste get some butter back on here my butter is actually getting soft on the counter over there which is nice just to give you guys an idea I don’t know why I’m so interested in the product but it’s set to 400° The Griddle is about 380 at the top with a cooler spot at the bottom by about 20° I’ve got my little balls into what I’ll call Loaves and I’ve got a piece of parchment paper all I’m doing is getting a nice contact with some of this butter creating some space I’m taking this one two three well that is going to be way too big for these croissant as Malcolm predicted but we will figure it out one two 3 that loaf thing didn’t work out at all two three o one two three you see I already seasoned with just some uh salt pepper garlic that part didn’t get quite as flat as I wanted but once these are on there you want to let them go I’m not screw with them um I’m going to let that R reaction happen on the bottom scoop them up flip them cheese them rub them down oh no put them on the bread and then we’ll be good to go so we’re back I Ed the steakhous elite uh brisket blend which has a fair amount of fat in it so I’m not getting quite the Char that I think at least by the looks cuz there’s so much fat rendering off but we’re going to give these a flip get the cheese going and assemble remember flip away from you I was about to do it the wrong way yet again oh that looks good they look far better than I thought we’ll now do the [Music] cheese and for anyone who’s a fast food expert you’ll realize this is why McDonald’s beats Burger King cuz Burger King doesn’t understand cheese ratios you need a piece of cheese for every damn Patty that’s the way it works going to let these guys cook for a little bit longer if I can get them close enough together I’d put a lid on them but I don’t think we’re going to need that we’re going to let it melt stack assemble all right going to stack these guys up now the precarious [Music] move we are done to go to a mble again little Skillets doing a hell of a good job indoors we’re ready for assembly uh rookie move I didn’t put my sauce on the bottom of the bun as well as on the top so if you’re doing this make sure you don’t make the same rookie move that I did to make up for that I’m going to Sauce the actual bun which we did not flatten on the black top which sort of negates the patty melt feel in some ways but we’re going to find out it’s all an experiment we don’t claim to be experts I put a healthy amount of this sauce on there I like Burger Lube as it was plus the word Lube makes people uncomfortable which makes me laugh the bacon jam looks fantastic going to move it around a little bit get some on the burger you don’t want so much that overpowers the burger probably but I don’t own a burger restaurant so what the hell do I know that looks like a good amount milk you think so yeah yeah all right here we go we got one for me one for Malcolm we’re going to get Malcolm’s off of this plate over to his plate we’re going to reposition this guy little cross-section looks pretty good let’s give it a shot uh-oh making a mess so off camera I made a comment that everyone tastes their food and they’re all like oh my God this is the greatest thing in the world it’s almost the second coming of the Messiah and I felt like it was so disingenuous like who would eat their own and be like oh this is terrible but all of us would but I’m here to tell you that’s goddamn good so Malcolm I’d love for you to try one of these try this other half let’s switch cameras give me the camera okay this is my producer dearest friend known him since he was about seven oh my watch what he does with his beard yall know anything about this yeah check that out his audio is going to be terrible so I’m going to narrate for him who that’s good wow I’ll probably edit that now he ate half my burger so we have to figure that out but at any rate that thing is baller as hell the bacon Jam great the sauce great the burger itself fantastic uh this experimentation day was a lot of fun well that’s it for today on Old School eats I want to thank everyone for tuning into this episode hopefully you enjoyed it I’m going to recap what we did because it was really a fun day of exploration uh for me and my buddy Malcolm here we started out with the candy croissant grilled cheese right here this had the chili oil on it and the honey butter that we smashed the croissant down in I needed to take the cheese a little bit further it didn’t melt quite as well as I would have liked I think Malcolm and I both felt like it could have had a little bit more honey but it was delicious incredibly tasty and if you’re tired of the same old grilled cheese it’s a really neat spin on it the second was the brua grilled cheese where we did a french toast treatment to a Brios Loaf and man it is almost like a dessert sand which is what we came away with and the inclusion of Brie in the cheese mix inside we had Brie American and uh thinly shredded fresh cheddar the combination was stupid and and I don’t have any fancy culinary words to say why it was so good but holy crap it was delicious and then last but not Le least this guda croissant patty melt Smash Burger thing with bacon Jam I’m here to tell you if I was served any of these three at a restaurant I would be ecstatic this was an immense amount of fun on my other videos it’s usually stuff that I’ve cooked before that I think I really like that my friends really really like and I’m trying to share it with you guys right that’s my dog barking in the background don’t worry about him you probably can’t even hear him but he’s a pain in the ass this was all new we had never cooked any of these before sure I’ve made grilled cheeses before you’ve made grilled cheeses before but it shows how you can take something that is so fundamental a grilled cheese we all grew up on them unless you’re lactose intolerant and you can really put an incredible spin on it so if you enjoyed the video please remember to like subscribe hit the notification Bell whatever other magical things you’re supposed to do and let me know if you’ve tried these things and again shout out to naughty fork and I’ll find the other gentleman’s name who did the bacon Jam which I didn’t talk enough about as well as this patty melt uh in the description below we’re back over to our bacon which is cooked down nicely uh I’m sure Mal will zoom in here and let you see what that looks like you don’t want to overcook this bacon it’s going to go back in once we incorporate the onions and all of the liquid and and seasoning and start rendering it or cooking it down so you want to get it to about this state and then pull it out and drain it and then we’re going to reserve about a tablespoon who’s keeping track really to start cooking down these onions so I’m going to get these out of the the bacon out of the pan set aside and move on to the onions so we’ve got our bacon off to the side draining a little bit we we reserved about a tablespoon or so of the oil we’re going to get our onions and like I mentioned in the intro these are ballia onions which are a little sweeter you can use whatever on want the gentleman whose recipe I stole used a red onion and we really want to just cook these down I am not a trained Chef as I have been honest and told you before this I would call this caramelizing and then we’re going to take it Beyond caramelizing to cook them down so we have enough of that bacon fat in here I believe to do that job if not I still got the Bacon Fat over there that I can pull some more out but it looks to me like we’re going to be fine we want those to gently cook down for about a minute and a half two minutes probably get that going and then we’ll start adding our other ingredients and then it’s just going to be an act of reduction getting those liquid ingredients in there reducing that sauce down now I’m using a cast iron skillet like a jackass so seeing whether or not that sauce recedes will be harder for me than if you use like a locker set or something with a white bottom where you can see it across or stainless pretty much anything other than a black pot a cast iron would have been easier but no one’s ever accused me of taking the path uh most traveled so we’re going to cook these onions down start getting this bacon Jam going so we’re back working on our bacon Jam the onions are looking fantastic I was just talking to Malcolm I can actually smell the sweetness which might be completely psychological but they smell great to me at this point we start uh the assembly I’m going to start with some garlic you guys already know the rule you don’t add garlic early cuz it’ll burn I’m following Sam the cooking guy here and I’m using the squeeze garlic about three cloves super good way to do it is this squeezy paste I’m not sure if it’s more fresh than the already chopped stuff that you get at Costco but it works well for me I’m going to incorporate that and that is definitely aromatic as they say um Malcolm made the comment it looks like there’s not a lot of onion in here and that’s fine by me because I’m not a huge onion fan but I know it’s important in this dish but we are following the recipe and I’ll again link to the gentleman out of the UK whose recipe this is now that that Garlic’s Incorporated pretty well we come in with our first two liquid ingredients we’ve got apple cider vinegar it’s a/4 cup and 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar oh that vinegar woo boy so I’m going to want to run this temperature down to a simmer as we start cooking this down looks good man I always forget how fragrant those two things are when you combine them but the acidity is going to cut through some of the the fat that was in there from the bacon I assume that’s the chemical reason why you do it but we’re really creating a a jam is the point we’re going to have to cook this down slowly but surely I’m going to drop this temperature down a little bit on my handy dandy little cook top and then we will start adding our other ingredients we’re back this is cooking down nicely it’s time to add our next two liquid ingredients and then two of our seasonings our next two liquid ingredients are Bourbon and maple syrup got a half half a cup of bourbon and a half a cup of maple syrup I did not use my man Brian’s maple syrup that he makes from his very own trees cuz that shit’s too good to put in a bacon jam and I’m going to eat it on pancakes but now we’ve got enough of this fluid in here that we’re going to need to start simmering it down and cooking it down but not before we add our smoked paprika it’s half a teaspoon and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper we’re reserving a qu of a teaspoon of time for the end and this was one of the things that was in almost everyone’s video that I saw making these bacon jams the ones who seem to be the best that I like the best anyway I didn’t taste any of them uh always added that time at the end and every one of them makes a comment about how impactful it was so at this point we have a nice liquid on the cooktop and we’re going to simmer it down until it thickens and then we’ll add our time and we’ll have our bacon Jam so we’re back over here with the bacon jam and to be honest it could down faster than I expected as you can see uh I’ll layer in the consistency it is absolutely a jam I also forgot to re chop the bacon you’re supposed to re chop the bacon to make it smaller really that’s a matter of personal preference I suppose if you want to be chunkier you can leave it like this I tasted it it tastes ridiculously good it’s got a little bit of heat that Cayenne was great and I do pick up the time so our bacon jam is done and we’ll be using that on our Patty melts so we’re going to get this bacon jam out of the cast iron and I heard from someone that I don’t know Gordon Ramsey or someone hates silicone tools and I don’t know why so I Googled it to try and figure out if there was a concern the concern seems to be that some of them under high temperature melt no right and that they are floppy sometimes so don’t lift heavy things with them so I don’t understand if there’s really a blood Feud against silicone I love using wood implements from time to time but for this job of getting all this delicious bacon jam out of here I don’t think there’s anything better than a great silicone paddle and as a fat guy there is absolutely nothing better for getting batter or icing out of a bowl so we’re going to get this bacon Jam off to the side do a little taste test on it finish up our brulee grilled cheese and then move on to our Patty melts