Sunday Brunch: French Toast and Canadian Bacon Sandwiches
The name of this recipe, adapted from James Vilas' must-have porcine tome
The Bacon Cookbook says it all. Vilas suggest you use the purists' Canadian bacon known as peameal bacon, but any old Canadian bacon will do just fine. If you don't have Vilas' book and you love bacon, buy it here by clicking on the book title above.
French Toast and Canadian Bacon Sandwiches
- serves 4 -
Ingredients
8 tablespoons (1 stick) plus 3 tablespoons butter
Eight to ten 1/4-inch-thick slices Canadian bacon
12 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
Salt and cayenne pepper to taste
8 to 10 slices white loaf bread, crusts removed
Maple syrup
Procedure
1. In a large skillet, melt the 3 tablespoons of butter over moderate heat, add the bacon slices, brown lightly, about 2 minutes on each side, and keep warm on a plate.
2. In a shallow bowl, whisk together 6 of the eggs with the milk, salt, and cayenne till well blended. In another bowl, whisk the remaining 6 eggs till frothy.
3. Cut each slice of bread in half digonally. Soak each slice momentarily in the milk mixture, then, using two forks or large spoons, carefully coat both sides of each slice in the beaten egg, placing the slices on a plate as they are coated.
4. In a large skillet, heat about 1/3 of the stick of butter over moderate heat, add about 1/3 of the coated slice, cook about 3 minutes on each side till golden, and transfer the toaste to a plate with a spatula. Repeat the procedure with the remaining butter and slices.
5. Cut the Canadian bacon into approximately the same size triangles as the toast, arrange the sandwiches on a large heated platter, and drizzle them liberally with maple syrup.
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8 Comments:
I think it would taste great with either, but peameal bacon and Canadian bacon are two different things.
ayngelina at 9:51AM on 01/18/09
I'm not sure if that's true, ayngelina. Check out realcanadianbacon.com. I would love to get a definitive answer on this.
Ed Levine at 10:14AM on 01/18/09
This sounds great, kind of like a Monte Cristo but not exactly. This would be awesome to make on mornings when smoking meat overnight, because I could throw the canadian bacon in the smoker for a brief period to give it a fresh smokehouse flavor.
swibirun at 11:23AM on 01/18/09
Well, in my local grocery here in Toronto, "Canadian bacon" is back bacon. "Peameal bacon" is also back bacon and both are rolled in peameal.
I'm sure you can get it at a proper meat counter, but I've never seen back bacon sold without the added peameal crust.
bearsarefree at 12:05PM on 01/18/09
How about sticking some cheese in there too, then melting it under a panini press?
DanielJ at 1:00PM on 01/18/09
Yes, add cheese, because 50 g of fat and 650 mg of cholesterol per sandwich isn't enough. :)
PommeDG at 4:26PM on 01/18/09
Canadian bacon: up here we call it back bacon and its a normal smoked loin.
Pea meal bacon: Pickled loin rolled in corn meal, but used to be rolled in pea meal. It is very salty and tender as one might expect from the pickling (brining or "corning"). Doesn't taste much like bacon as there is no smoke involved, but very nice sliced, fried up or baked in a piece. Only see it sold as a piece rather than sliced like back bacon around here.
Of the two styles, pea meal is probably the "true" Canadian style. I've always wondered how back bacon came to be called Canadian bacon in the U.S.
porchetta at 4:42PM on 01/18/09
Yikes,
The discussion about what is/isn't "Canadian Bacon" is sounding more and more convoluted. I have been here in the land of the maple leaf for 58 years, and have travelled extensively in the USA in that same number of years. I have yet to see a product for sale in our supermarkets or butcher shops with the label "Canadian Bacon." In the USA, I have yet to see anything labelled "Canadian Bacon" that resembles our peameal bacon in any way other than the source of the meat.
When travellling in the USA, I see various products labelled "Canadian Bacon": I have seem a product looking like pancetta in a package labelled "Canadian Bacon"; I have seen thinly-sliced pieces of (presumably) cooked (or otherwise prepared) pork loin; I have been served (in both VA and CO, at more than one place) slices of sugar-cured ham that were dubbed "Canadian Bacon." In short, I have seem just about any pork product short of what most of us know as strip bacon called "Canadian Bacon" when frequenting restaurants and browsing aisles in supermarkets.
When I buy bacon here in Ontario, I have four choices: (a) strip bacon (thin or thick cut), (b) pickled pork loin (a.k.a. peameal/back bacon), and (c) "English style" bacon (a processed pork loin, without the peameal or pickling), or (d) pancetta - arguably not a type of bacon in some circles.
Thus, what we (in my part of Ontario) call peameal or back bacon isn't the same as American "Canadian Bacon," with all due respect to those who assert otherwise. It's a different product, that varies it would seem by region and interpretation.
wlundycan at 12:38PM on 01/19/09