Bacon has long been a staple of the American diet. Whether you’re eating it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert, it adds the perfect salty, smoky flavor, so I wanted to give you some fun new ideas. Bacon, before it’s cooked, is easy to wrap pretty much any ingredient with: hence, bacon-wrapped foods.
From sweet to savory, here are some foods that always taste better when they’re bacon-wrapped.
Breakfast Pie
This bacon-wrapped recipe doesn’t stray too far into the unusual. The breakfast pie combines all of your usual breakfast favorites, including eggs and hash browns, and wraps the top in a bacon weave. It’s like icing on a cake, but for breakfast.
Cinnamon Rolls
This is probably the simplest recipe on the list, but with the most flavor complexity. All you need to do is wrap store bought cinnamon rolls with bacon and you have the sweet and savory breakfast combo of the century in 20 minutes.
Dates
If you haven’t tried this combo that’s been circulating the food world lately, you’re missing out. The sweet, caramel flavor of the dates pairs perfectly with crunchy, salty bacon in this simple recipe.
If you’re looking for a more complex appetizer for your next party, try this recipe, which incorporates goat cheese and rosemary for more sophisticated flavor.
Mozzarella
These bacon-wrapped mozzarella bombs are like your favorite childhood mozzarella sticks on steroids. Or an elevated version of your go-to drunchies, depending on how you look at it.
Either way, you’ll want to try these out next time you get a hankering for something with a cheese pull.
Grilled Cheese
Keeping with the reliable cheese, bacon, and childhood snack combo, these bacon-wrapped grilled cheese dunkers can be your next snack in less than 20 minutes.
This recipe calls for a sriracha-ketchup dip, but if you want to make it a meal, try dipping them in a bowl of tomato soup instead.
Brussels Sprouts
What’s the best way to make eating vegetables tolerable? Wrap them in bacon. These bacon-wrapped brussels sprouts on a stick make for the perfect backyard barbecue party appetizer. As an added bonus, they’re paleo and low-carb, too.
Stuffed Avocado
This combination of egg, avocado, and bacon makes for a low-carb breakfast that’ll actually keep you satisfied until lunch. This restaurant-quality dish can be ready in less than 30 minutes, so you have no excuse not to try it.
Sweet Potato Fries
Sweet potato fries are already one of my all-time favorite sides; they’re like sweet and savory royalty. Wrapping them in bacon just takes the whole experience to another level—you have to try for yourself to believe.
#SpoonTip: Make sure your oven is nice and hot to ensure that the bacon gets crispy.
Mashed Potatoes
I’m not quite sure how to go about describing these delicious fried bacon-wrapped bombs. With mashed potatoes, cheese, and bacon as the ingredients, there’s not much that can go wrong.
When you drop them in the deep frier, the best finger food of all time is born.
Macaroni and Cheese Bites
As with many foods that taste amazing on their own, macaroni and cheese bites wrapped in bacon only get better. These are great to make ahead of time and then warm up as your party guests get hungry—the bacon will get crispier and the cheese gooier.
Stuffed Peppers
With the running theme of cheese and bacon, these bacon-wrapped stuffed peppers have an added spicy flavor that cuts through all the fat nicely. The thing about these is that you can customize the recipe to the spice level of your liking, depending on the type of pepper.
Chicken
And now we take the last recipe to the next level by adding a second protein.
These bacon-wrapped chicken and pepper bombs pack so many different flavors, you’ll get a new experience with every bite. They even hold up as a main meal component because of the multiple levels of flavor and texture.
Meatloaf
This ain’t your grandma’s meatloaf.
Wrapping such a traditional, time-honored comfort dish in bacon makes for a juicier, smokier version that’ll make everyone actually excited for meatloaf night.
Cheeseburger
Literally nothing can go wrong when you combine beef, pork, and cheese with onion in a baseball-sized monstrosity. That’s why this sinful recipe needs to be next up on your bucket list. At least you skip the carbs from the bun, right?
Peaches
To me, there’s nothing that screams “summer dessert” like grilled peaches. This recipe turns them into a delicious sweet and savory appetizer that can be made on the grill, in a pan, or in the oven. It’s easy as pie!
Cannoli Cream
This recipe is a little less bacon-wrapped than it is bacon-stuffed, but I couldn’t help but include it. It’s surprisingly easy to make bacon in cannoli shapes, then stuff them with cream, so don’t hesitate to make these for your next party.
Once you try this sweet and savory bacon-wrapped twist, you’ll never want to go back to the original version.
Twix-Stuffed Twinkies
I thought I’d wrap up (get it) this bacon-wrapped recipe roundup with the most indulgent food I could find. The North Carolina state fair takes the prize with deep-fried bacon-wrapped twix-stuffed twinkles.
I’m not sure how you would make this at home, or if it’s even medically advisable, so you’ll just have to make the trip.
While it may be debatable if everything tastes better wrapped in bacon, these recipes prove that most edible foods are improved upon by being bacon-wrapped. Prepare your arteries.