It’s game night, and the way we see it, you have two choices. One: salsa from a jar. Two: an extremely easy bacon and roasted corn salsa that’ll undoubtedly taste better than salsa from a jar, and possibly also make the beer taste better, help the Canadian Juniors win, and improve life in general. It has to be good: there’s bacon in it.
Anyway, this recipe comes to us courtesy of Jennifer L. Pearsall. She keeps an awesome blog called The Bacon Affairs that, incidentally, inspired a lot of her first book, The Big Book of Bacon. She’s back with more pork-inspired delights in her new book, Praise the Pig, from which this recipe is reprinted. It has all kinds of good stuff like crown roast of pork, pozole pie, and porkestrone soup. Check it out.
Bacon & Roasted Corn Salsa
Nothing speaks to the sweetness of summer like sweet corn. And nothing complements sweet corn like bacon. Put the two together with a few more things and you have a chip dip unlike any other. Here’s what you’ll need to make a couple cups:
1 pound of bacon
8 to 10 ears of fresh corn
½-stick of butter, melted
1 teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper
½-teaspoon of salt
Half of one red onion, diced fine
1 jalapeno onion, chopped fine
6 green onions chopped, both whites and greens
1 tablespoon of mayonnaise
- Soak the corn ears in a large pot of cold water for an hour.
- Cook your bacon in a 380-degree oven for 17 to 25 minutes.
- Melt the butter and combine with cayenne and ½ teaspoon of salt. Peel back the green leaves on each cob but don’t remove. Remove the silk, then brush each cob with the butter mixture, pulling the leaves up around the cob. Place the cobs, three to four in a batch, on a sheet of aluminum foil, bringing the foil up around them but not totally closing them in, i.e., you want to leave the top open to vent steam.
- When your bacon is done, remove the tray and slide in the corn. Roast at that temperature for 20 minutes.
- Drain your bacon on a plate lined with paper towels. When it is cool, chop roughly and put in a mixing bowl. Do the same with your other vegetables.
- When the corn is cool enough to handle, cut the bottoms off the cobs, stand each on this newly flattened end, and remove the roasted kernels with a sharp knife, slicing from top to bottom. Add the corn to the bacon and vegetable mix, toss with mayonnaise if you like, and serve up with the best tortilla chips you can find.
Recipe reprinted with permission from Praise the Pig: Loin to Belly, Shoulder to Ham—Pork-Inspired Recipes for Every Meal by Jennifer L. Pearsall (Skyhorse Publishing, 2015).
