At work, I'm known for occasionally trying (and making) some odd things. A while back, I brought some bacon cookies to work and a lot of people liked them. Then one day, a coworker, remembering the bacon cookies, sent me a link to the bacon contest. I didn't want to enter the bacon cookies, as the recipe was not originally mine. After thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted to enter something edible, functional, and somewhat challenging. (Without the chance of complete and utter failure, it wasn't that interesting to me.) What popped into my head was a soup bowl... made entirely of bacon.
The main challenges were twofold: 1. it had to have enough structural integrity to stand on its own while holding a full serving of soup; 2. it had to be leak free for at least a few minutes - enough time to actually consume the soup. My basic idea for the bowl was to have three layers.
The outer layers would be cooked crisp to provide the strength and maintain the shape. Crisp bacon is by no means leak proof, which necessitates the middle layer - cooked but still soggy bacon. This layer would provide the leak resistance. Now all I had to do was create it and try it.
For a bonus, I decided to make a spoon out of bacon as well.
The main challenges were twofold: 1. it had to have enough structural integrity to stand on its own while holding a full serving of soup; 2. it had to be leak free for at least a few minutes - enough time to actually consume the soup. My basic idea for the bowl was to have three layers.
The outer layers would be cooked crisp to provide the strength and maintain the shape. Crisp bacon is by no means leak proof, which necessitates the middle layer - cooked but still soggy bacon. This layer would provide the leak resistance. Now all I had to do was create it and try it.
For a bonus, I decided to make a spoon out of bacon as well.
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Signing UpStep 1: Equipment and Materials
Here's what I used.
- Three 500g packages of bacon (regular thickness)
- A bowl
- A heat gun
- A cake pan
- A chopstick
- Tin foil (not shown)
- Toothpicks (not shown)
- Several skewers (not shown)
- Scissors (not shown)
- A mini-torch (optional)
- A can of soup (should be a thick soup)
Although a spoon is in the picture, I didn't end up using it to make the bowl.
The soup shown is Smoky Bacon Clam Chowder.
The cake pan is used solely to catch the runoff bacon fat. A cookie tray or pie tin will do just as well.
One note regarding the chopstick: I ended up not using the one displayed and instead used a disposable wooden one - the heat gun does very bad things to chopsticks so use an uncoated, unpainted, disposable wooden one.
Warning, this bowl takes several hours to make (3-4) so be prepared.
- Three 500g packages of bacon (regular thickness)
- A bowl
- A heat gun
- A cake pan
- A chopstick
- Tin foil (not shown)
- Toothpicks (not shown)
- Several skewers (not shown)
- Scissors (not shown)
- A mini-torch (optional)
- A can of soup (should be a thick soup)
Although a spoon is in the picture, I didn't end up using it to make the bowl.
The soup shown is Smoky Bacon Clam Chowder.
The cake pan is used solely to catch the runoff bacon fat. A cookie tray or pie tin will do just as well.
One note regarding the chopstick: I ended up not using the one displayed and instead used a disposable wooden one - the heat gun does very bad things to chopsticks so use an uncoated, unpainted, disposable wooden one.
Warning, this bowl takes several hours to make (3-4) so be prepared.
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What an EXCELLENT instructable!
Great job.
Yeah, I didn't think about the snipped off parts. I sure like the idea of using one as a container for something like a dip and the adding those snipped off pieces to the dip mix.
Then after the mix is gone, rinse it off and put it in the microwave for a minute or so, making it hot and sit down to a delicious snack of bacon bowl.
Made my mouth water, just following the instructable.
3:00am, that puts you seven hours worth of time changes from me, somewhere across the Atlantic?
Oops, it is about 03:45 am here right now, I need to get some sleep too.
Thanks for the reply, Kabapu.
Just Google my name if you want to know a little about what kind of things I do.
Incidentally, it looks like we're in the same time zone (PST). The 3 am I was referring to was when I posted the instructable rather than the last response.
Here I am again, about 3am and no sleep yet. GOTTA quit doing this!
Regards
And using the heat gun is brilliant. I've previously made bacon cups on the underside of a muffin tin in the oven, and in retrospect a heat gun would allow for far more control. Nicely done.
I think this would be great for dips. I think that it would last for a few hours until it got to soggy from the moisture. Dip would be thick enough not to mention not hot like soup that a little leak wouldn't matter.
I hadn't thought about dips but you're right that it would last a lot longer and be less prone to leaks. For dips, the middle layer could probably be cooked more. That would give it more strength and extend the time you could have it out.
If you use it for a dip, you can probably do bacon straws for decoration. Do something similar for the spoon but wrap the entire strip of bacon around the chopstick.
One thing I forgot to mention in the instructable is that I took some of the bacon I snipped off and dropped it into the soup. If suitable, you could probably finely dice the snipped off bacon and mix it with the dip for even more bacon goodness.