Turkey Paninis with Candied Bacon & Avocado
There are some holy grail of ingredient combinations and I swear, we found it in this panini! Extra savory bread, fatty avocado, sinfully good bacon? Yes, please.
I genuinely love a good sandwich for any meal of the day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. Doesn’t matter to me. #sandwichfan for life, ya know?
I whole heartedly believe the trick to a top notch panini is mayo. On the outside. Instead of butter. Have you heard this trick before? Usually it comes up in the good old, How to Make the Best Grilled Cheese. The trick is never the cheese, it’s in the mayo on the bread! If you haven’t tried it, you should. If you think it’s gross, I hear you, I get it, I’m with you. I respectfully disagree and go back to, if you haven’t tried it, you should.
The mayo on the bread helps the bread toast up with a little extra flavor. It’s the thing that will take you from, this is good, to, what is that je ne sais quoi in your sandwich?!
But then, there’s the candied bacon. I know, it’s kind of a lot when you have to prep ingredients just to put ingredients on a sandwich. Again, I hear you, I get it, I’m with you. By no means is an excellent panini predicated on this candied bacon, but damn, it’s good.
Candied bacon is actually really simple. I just toss about half a cup of brown sugar in a bowl and then dunk the strips (preferably of thick cut) bacon into the brown sugar and get them nice and coated. Then, I put them on a cooling rack on a baking sheet and into a cold oven. As the oven heats up to 350 the bacon cooks and gets all caramely good.
I’ve done candied bacon on the stove top, and while it does work, the oven method seems to be best. When you use the cooling rack, the bacon isn’t cooking up in it’s own fat – key #1 – so it’s not getting too hot and therefore not burning the sugar. And then key #2 is that it’s slowly heating up, so again, the sugar isn’t burning. You let it cool and it gets all sticky and hardens up a bit and then gives your sandwich a little pop of heat.
I also use a panini maker for this, and while you don’t need one, I do love mine! You can also use a grill pan and then place another heavy pan on top of the sandwich to press it into the grill pan and get the marks (and pressed sandwich vibe).
But don’t skip the mayo!
