Put a Bacon On It

It's all soooooo tiring isn't it? Bacon-this, and Bacon-that...People brushing their teeth with strips of bacon, laying uncooked slabs of maple cured pork on their loved ones chests to cure their cold, junkies cutting their cocaine with bacon salt.
I know...I know. It's over done.

But I claim victory in this current baking episode...the case of the Bacon-Bourbon-Sweet Tater Pie. I'm not from the south...though I do care deeply for Bourbon, large hats, lilty accents, Gone With the Wind, and sexy Cajun fiddlers. What better show of support for all [good] things southern than at a party I was recently invited to. Teresa Tidwell Busch's Southern Fried Thowdown, which featured 5 chefs from various southern states cooking their signature dishes they grew up enjoying. The guests (me included) were asked to bring a side dish. I thought this would be a great opportunity to debut a new creation I thought of, BACON PIE CRUST. The rest of the pie was easy, pouring a shot of bourbon into the mashed potato-cream-butter-and spice-sugar mixture in my kitchen aid bowl and dump said goop into the bacon pie crust. Increase amount of liquid slightly as the bacon will absorb it. It's as easy as all that! Seriously!

My tiny RV kitchen

I'll give a brief overview on how I made the pie...and seriously, baking while drunk is really fun...but make sure you kind of have whatever recipe "down" beforehand. I know my pie would have come out better if I wouldn't have taken so many pulls out of the bourbon bottle, but whatever.

1 lb. sweet potatoes
2 eggs
1 1⁄2 cups milk
4 tbsp. butter, melted and cooled
1 cup brown sugar
1⁄2 tsp. ground cloves
1 1⁄2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1⁄2 tsp. nutmeg
1⁄4 tsp. salt
1  9" Unbaked pie shell
1. Preheat oven to 450°. Peel sweet potatoes, cut into large pieces, and cook in boiling salted water over high heat until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain, mash, and measure.
2. Whisk/Mix/Whatever eggs, milk, butter, brown sugar, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, BOURBON and salt in a large bowl. Add sweet potatoes; beat until smooth. Pour into an unbaked 9" pie shell. Bake 15 minutes; lower oven to 350° and bake an additional 20–25 minutes until set. Cool completely before cuttin'...

Made with Love, and Lard

For the crust use your favorite crust recipe. If you don't have one go to  mirror, look into it for a very long time. Ask the image looking back at WHY IN GOD'S NAME THEY DON'T HAVE A PREFERRED PIE CUST RECIPE and then go to a fucking computer, or cookbook (if you can read) and FIGURE IT OUT. If you're an emergency room surgeon, you have twin babies hanging off your nipples, or you have given up on life, there's always the store bought shit.
Cook the fucking bacon, I added some maple syrup and brown sugar to add some carmel flavor and to make the bacon a bit more cripsy. Chop the fucking bacon. Sprinkle said fucking bacon into the crust. Roll it out, droop over pie pan. Pour sweet tater goop into shell. Do something cute for the top, or whatever.
Put in pie hole...don't forget to chew, dummy!

Later at the party...everyone was too damn full on the delicious spread of ham hocks, fried chicken, gumbo, chicken fried bacon, pork belly sammiches, deep fried shrimps wrapped in bacon, deep fried catfish, and layer cake, that by the time I slapped my little pie on the table everyone was ready to kick me in the face for adding insult to fattiness. Lesson learned.

Fun party though! Thanks Teresa!