2015 State Fair - Bacon Contest

Bacon Wrapped Shrimp

I never thought I'd be saying this but I think I'm a little tired of bacon right now. I've been cooking with it since the County Fair in July. It's wonderful but I've gone into bacon overload.

Today was the Indiana Pork Producer's Bacon Recipe Contest. You could enter a dish in one of two categories - Savory or Sweet. I chose Savory. Rules were it was any dish that contained at least 6 slices or 1/4 of a cup of cooked crumbled bacon. Dishes were judged as follows:

40% Taste and Flavor
25% Creativity and Originality
25% Texture and Consistency
10% Appearance and Presentation

I had a GREAT idea for this contest. It, too, had come from the Beer and Bacon Classic. There was a dish served there that had cheese and grits with a bacon jam-like topping. I already had a recipe for bacon jam that I'd made before. My idea was to elaborate on the cheese and grits theme but maybe add in some shrimp and dress up the grits a bit more, and then top it all off with a dollop of bacon jam.

Wednesday I was suppose to compete in the Crockpot Creations Contest. I decided Tuesday night that I just couldn't do it. I didn't have a great crockpot recipe and I was too tired to come up with one. I needed a day off to just catch up around the house. I did just that but cooked more bacon to make the bacon jam.

Bacon, bacon, bacon!

The jam uses a pound and a half of bacon with some onions, garlic, brown sugar, cider vinegar, pepper, and coffee. You put it in a slow cooker for about 4 hours until it gets thick, then put it in a food processor until the bacon is still chunky but spreadable. It's wonderful on bread.

Trust me, it's good!

 



So bacon jam was made on Wednesday at a leisurely pace with no mishaps. Thursday I shopped for more ingredients and did a trial of my vision - grits with Parmesan cheese, a bit of bacon jam swirled in, chives, and a couple pieces of shrimp cooked in a pan with bacon grease and then cut into bite size pieces. The whole thing was topped with more bacon jam.

Well, it sounded good. It tasted pretty good too. Problem was, you couldn't taste the bacon. I might have cooked my bacon too crisp but there was not enough bacon taste in my jam. It had a flavored meat taste instead. The grits were good; they just tasted like cheese.

I tried again. This time I added pieces of regular cooked bacon to the grits, used less cheese and topped it with bacon jam. Still not what I was looking for. Plus, the dish was going to have to be served at room temperature out at the fairgrounds. I wasn't too sure what would happen to the grits at room temperature. I left the whole mess on my counter and went to brainstorm.

One of my other ideas with the shrimp had been to wrap it in bacon and put it on top of the grits rather than cut it up and put it in the grits. Now I thought about just doing the shrimp and bacon. I looked at a couple ideas online and then just went to bed.

This morning I checked on the room temperature grits. They had pretty much solidified - like I could actually turn the bowl over and the grits came out in a solid piece like out of a mold. Grits were never going to work. I decided to go with the bacon wrapped shrimp idea.

Bacon wrapped shrimp. Very simple. Just like it sounds. Cook the bacon partway, brush it with a BBQ sauce/maple syrup mixture, wrap it around your shrimp and bake and broil it some more. That's it. Four ingredients and some chopped green onion for garnish. That's what I went with.

Once the contest started and the other entries were shown I saw that I had by far the simplest entry. There were things like bacon calzones, bacon breakfast pizza, bacon scones and bacon pasta. Someone made the exact bacon jam that I had made and put it over baked zucchini. The judges thought the bacon jam was "interesting," which in my book is code for "they didn't really like it." Just my opinion. One thing they did comment on on some of the more complicated dishes was that they couldn't really taste the bacon. First thing they tasted was cheese. When they bit into my dish, the comment was, "Wow! Bacon is the star of this dish." Well, duh, I only had four ingredients. I thought they liked it but, again, it only had four ingredients.

The judges tasted all the sweet bacon items next before going behind the curtain to decide on the winners for both categories. The first sweet item that was presented was Bacon Jam. Again the exact same recipe I had. A couple entries later, someone else made a Bacon Marmalade with a very similar recipe served over crosanti. By now I was really glad I didn't go with my original idea. It's funny how you think you have a very original concept but then you have to remember that your competitors are all foodies like yourself!

Time to announce the winners...
Christine got Honorable Mention with the Bacon Scones.
Fourth Place went to the Bacon Pasta.
I'm not sure what got Third because Phyllis was talking to me and pointing out that they had just brought my dish onto the stage. Yes!
I got Second.
Raymond got First with a savory custard that had Brie, Havarti with Dill, and one other cheese, mixed with some eggs, apples, and bacon all poured into a pie crust.

Overall, very happy once again that I placed, especially since I pulled this one out last minute!

Today was my last day at the Fair for this year. It runs through Sunday but I am done. It's back to work for me this weekend. I decided this year that I would be "ALL IN" and concentrate fully on the Fair while it was going on. It was probably one of my best years ever... but I'm glad it's all over now. I need to do a bit of food detoxing to say the least.

I looked at the exhibits in the Home and Family Arts Building one more time, took some pictures, said hi to a couple more people that I only see during the Fair, had a strawberry shortcake at the Ag/Hort Building, then called it a year.