Make That Meme: Bacon Tacos

We have all seen memes with crazy food or crafts and thought “it would be fun to try that!” Well, folks, yesterday I did that. I attempted bacon tacos.

I first saw this meme the day after I started my blog, so I knew now was the time to try something crazy. Especially since I’m not doing anything else right now. So yesterday I tackled the bacon taco. And today I’m going to share my experience with you.

Buckle up and hang on folks, because this is a wild ride!

I should probably start by saying that I rarely follow a recipe, or measure. I use the recipe as a guideline and eyeball spices and seasonings. So it’s pretty fitting that all I had to go on to make this bacon taco shell was a picture.

Let’s break down what we know:

• The entire shell is bacon. So it has to be sturdy.
• It’s woven.
• It’s circular.

When I decided to attempt these, I ordered a taco holder, that apparently Texans call “taco tents”. We make a lot of tacos, and I’ve wanted some anyway. But Amazon told me it was not an essential item and my delivery would be delayed. So I had to make a taco mold.

Aluminum foil taco mold.

Luckily, we have PLENTY of aluminum foil. Here’s where I made my first mistake. I got so excited about this project I only made one taco mold. And then I opened all the bacon. So, folks, make all your taco molds first, then you won’t have to wash your hands 18 million times to keep from getting raw bacon on everything. The bacon mess will be extensive, but we want to keep it contained.

I decided to do 4 taco molds for the two of us. For regular tacos, we usually eat 3 or 4 each. Add the bacon and 2 each was plenty!!

To make the mold, I ripped 2 pieces of aluminum foil about the length of a small cookie sheet. I crinkled the first sheet long ways like a rug scrunches up when you try to slide across it on a wood floor in socks. I loosely shaped it into a fat taco, careful not to squish it, that’s for the next piece. The second piece I draped over one end to enclose all the folds, then shaped the outside and squished it solid. Be sure the bottom is flat so it stands up in the oven. Take extra precaution here. I didn’t.

Alright, on to the bacon. Weave it. Make your kids weave it. It’s time consuming, but it’s a sensory activity. And it promotes dexterity, and shapes (?), and random life skills. Maybe they will get college credit for underwater basket weaving, it’s close enough.

Woven bacon.

I made my circles about 6 inches in diameter. So it was about 4 strips of bacon each way. I used a glass mixing bowl to cut a circle from the woven bacon.

One other thing to make sure you do before you start touching bacon: have 2 extra bowls, other than the stencil bowl. You will have excess bacon. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to throw it away. We’re going to use it later for Maple Candied Bacon. That’s right. We’re making dessert after our tacos!

Sneak peak of bits for maple candied bacon.

For those of you paying attention, I said you needed 2 extra bowls. What’s the other bowl for, you ask? Some pieces you cut off will be teeny and some pretty fatty. We are using those to go in our crockpot of beans tomorrow. No bacon was wasted in the making of this meme.

Ok. Back to the tacos. So after you have cut around your bowl and sorted your excess bacon properly, it’s time to put it on the mold. This was fun. This was where I learned another thing that would have come in handy earlier. Your bacon needs to be very cold. I came home from the grocery store and laid everything out until I was ready to get started, so by the time I got to this step the fat was starting to get flimsy. It’s much easier to work with if the bacon is solid. So leave it in the fridge until the last possible minute, the colder the better.

A nice little flip-scoop and voilà!

Don’t forget to make sure the bottoms are flat. Give a little wobble check before you put them in the oven.

Sometime before now you should have pre-heated the oven. I put it on 350. Other recipes show bacon cooking at 400, but I already have an issue smoking up the house and scaring all the animals, so I did 350. Up until this point things were going pretty well, despite the limp bacon.

They had been in the oven about 20 minutes when I noticed the bacon curling. I did not foresee this issue. So I took them out. Remember when I said make sure the bottoms were flat and sturdy? One wobbled, I yelled, I caught it, kinda looking like I stopped in the middle of a game of Twister. I carefully ease everything onto the stovetop, and try to gently flip the bacon back onto the mold.

Now would be a good time to mention that since I opened the bacon, Rambo, the stripes cat, had been hanging out under my feet. He’s not particularly social, but apparently he likes bacon. His patience paid off.

This is when I decided that before I put the bacon into the oven, I should have wrapped it in a blanket.

Bacon blankets.

They stayed all warm and cozy in the oven for about another hour. So about an hour and a half total. This gave me plenty of time to prep the Maple Candied Bacon and brown the taco meat using my own blend of taco seasoning in place of the fake powder packet from the store. Both of which I plan on putting on the blog soon. But this is already a really long post, and our tacos aren’t even done yet!

Fast forward to when the bacon shells are ready. Tada!

I promise this isn’t the same picture. These are more brown and slightly more crunchy.

It definitely doesn’t keep its shape. Not crispy.

They definitely didn’t get as crunchy as the one I was trying to recreate. Which means they didn’t hold a taco shape. It ended up more like a floppy bowl. But it held taco meat. So that’s a win. And it tasted good, so that’s also a win.

All in all. They were edible. They were actually pretty delicious. But they didn’t turn out at all like they were supposed to and definitely weren’t worth the time spent. I do think it would work better if they were deep fried. They would cook faster and crispier. Maybe we’ll try that in the future.

If you ask me, skip the basket weaving, use the bacon to make Maple Candied Bacon, and just eat regular tacos.

And that’s my two cents.

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