Elevate boring old butter with the palate-pleaser BACON! Homemade treats like this Bacon and Brown Sugar Butter recipe are a fun way to enhance toast, croissants, potatoes, even corn on the cob, and more.
Food is certainly one of the ways that we nourish our bodies, but it also nourishes the soul and spirit. Shared and served, a delicious meal or rare treat is a love language all its own.
If you are looking for a heartfelt but economical way to tell someone in your life that you care, a simple but tasty topping or baking helper like our Brown Sugar Bacon Butter may just do the trick.
Plus, when you’re thinking about the joy of bacon and what to do with bacon, and you’ve plain run out of ideas on what to make next, this bacon and butter recipe is both a gift for yourself and maybe even for someone else.
Anytime is really a great time when trying to think up things to make with bacon, but holidays are always a no-brainer.
This is a fairly mild-flavored butter. To pack in the smoky bacon flavor, you may want to add a drop of hickory smoke flavoring but go easy—a very little smoke liquid goes a super long way.
Want a sweeter bacon butter spread? Use the same amount of sugar but add another 2 T of maple syrup or even honey.
What’s the best butter for infused butter recipes?
The type of butter you use can greatly affect the final product, so we definitely recommend a high-quality butter. Have you seen those one-pound chunks of wax-paper wrapped Amish butters in your grocery store?
For the longest time, I wasn’t sure what I’d do with all that butter at once until I realized it was ideal for making gifts like these. We did find it just a tad saltier than other over-the-counter domestic butters, so keep that in mind when tinkering with your recipe.
We also like creamy Challenger butter and the protein-rich, super yellow Kerry Gold butter, but there are quite a few out there—just choose your favorite plain butter (not whipped or already flavored, though).
You can use either salted or unsalted. Especially if you are wanting your final product to be sweeter, use unsalted butter.
Can I use margarine to make a spread?
Margarine is so strongly flavored with salt and chemical aftertaste that I wouldn’t recommend using it for this recipe, and it does not retain its shape very well.
What’s the best bacon to use for bacon butter spread?
Again, good ingredients make better dishes. If you get thick-cut bacon, you’ll get bigger pieces in the final product. We are as happy with Aldi’s brand of thick-cut bacon as we are with center-cut bacon from Black Label, which will have fewer gristly or “chewy” pieces overall.
How do I use the bacon butter?
This bacon butter recipe is glorious on top of pancakes, waffles, crepes, and toast, but also corn on the cob, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes (oh, yes!), glazed carrots or roasted turnips, even mixed into a buttery pasta sauce for butternut squash ravioli. Use it in recipes to replace the butter, like in chocolate chip cookies, cakes and all kinds of glazes. Imagine a rum cake that uses this butter in the glaze recipe! Oh, lawdy. You could top cuts of meat, particularly grilled pork chops and beef sirloin, either as is, or combined with sautéed onions.
What if I don’t have any wax paper for my butter recipe?
You can use any vessel for this you like. The wax paper with the ribbons tied on each end tend to make a pretty presentation, but it’s not necessary.
Do you have 4 oz. Bell jars? You can write on the top and add ribbons around the lid on those, too. You can also buy small plasticware containers with lids, in cute designs or just clear.
We don’t recommend using baggies because the butter will be very hard to get out of them, even after it’s solid.
Bacon and Brown-Sugar Butter
Create this easy, economical bacon butter spread to give as gifts or freeze and keep for yourself to use at special occasions.
Ingredients
- 1 pound of high-quality butter, like Kerry Gold or Challenger
- 1 pound of high-quality center-cut bacon, plain or hickory smoked
- ¼ c brown sugar
- ½ t of sea salt
- Optional: 1 or 2 T of maple syrup or honey for additional sweetness
- Wax paper
- Mixing bowl
- Wooden Spoon
- Teaspoon
- Ribbon
- Tape
- Scissors or kitchen shears
Instructions
- Empty the sticks of butter into a glass bowl and let it sit to soften to room temperature. Don’t microwave or heat the butter at all, so you’ll need a bit of patience. A full hour should bring all of the butter to soften texture.
- While the butter is softening, cook the bacon until very crispy but not burned. We like to use a conventional oven or cast iron on the stovetop. To speed up the cooking process, cut each slice of bacon into thirds before placing it on the cooking surface. Cook till crisp. Drain fat, cool, then crumble the bacon into a bowl. Separate and discard any obvious hard or gristly pieces. Set aside.
- Using a wooden spoon, stir just the butter to bring it to a smooth, batter-like consistency. Add the cooked bacon crumbles, brown sugar, sea salt, and maple syrup, if you are choosing to use it. Combine well, until sugar and bacon appear evenly distributed. Set the bowl aside.
- Pre-cut wax paper works particularly well, but the rolls are fine too. Pull out a 10-inch length of wax paper. You may need to weigh both ends down so it doesn’t curl up. Using a teaspoon, spoon out the butter mixture toward the end of the sheet, width-wise, until it’s about as long as a stick of butter, about 5 inches. It’s very soft at this stage. Turn the butter end toward you. Using both hands, roll the paper and butter up as you might with a burrito or an egg roll wrapper. As you roll “plump” the roll as you go, so the butter fills out the wax paper. It’s ok if it’s not perfectly cylindrical—that’s part of the charm of homemade gifts. When you get to the end, one piece of tape should keep this together, but you may not even need it. You will be embellishing the ends with ribbon, so cut a six-inch ribbon curl for each and tie this off, making a “balloon” end on each side. If there is a lot of wax paper on each end, trim off with kitchen shears or scissors. Add a gift tag to the center or dangled from another section of the ribbon tied to one end.
- Since these will still be soft, place them carefully in the refrigerator, laid flat so they can harden up as wax-paper cylinders. They should be good in your refrigerator for a couple of months, generally as long as typical butter is kept covered and cold. You can freeze them for a year, but I recommend that you place the entire roll into a freezer baggie to protect them from freezer burn.
Nutrition Information:
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 0Total Fat: 0gSaturated Fat: 0gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 0mgCarbohydrates: 0gFiber: 0gSugar: 0gProtein: 0g