Achieving a Darker cook - Bacon

Hey everyone 

Has anyone any ideas on how we can achieve a darker cook on our cooked bacon flakes.

The process is - meat is tumbled and stuffed into rolls - frozen in a blast freezer and then tempered to -10°C - sliced at 14-16mm and cooked at 250°C cooled in the blast chill then put in the dicer to be made into flakes. 

A customer has requested the darker cook. Our oven is conveyor oven with 4 plates 2 on top and 2 on the bottom each sitting around 250°C. Some one has suggested 'double cook' but that would involve bringing the cooked bacon back into the low risk side and the thought has made me extremely nervous to say the least so that idea was immediately threw out.

Its being cooked as slow as the oven will allow.

All thoughts would be greatly appreciated 

Thanks a mill 

Donna x

Add oil or some sort of fat agent before it goes to get cooked at 250°C. I might want to bring that temp down a tad if you do end up using my suggestion. Spray some down a little with oil and see what happens.

Hey everyone 

 

Has anyone any ideas on how we can achieve a darker cook on our cooked bacon flakes.

 

The process is - meat is tumbled and stuffed into rolls - frozen in a blast freezer and then tempered to -10°C - sliced at 14-16mm and cooked at 250°C cooled in the blast chill then put in the dicer to be made into flakes. 

 

A customer has requested the darker cook. Our oven is conveyor oven with 4 plates 2 on top and 2 on the bottom each sitting around 250°C. Some one has suggested 'double cook' but that would involve bringing the cooked bacon back into the low risk side and the thought has made me extremely nervous to say the least so that idea was immediately threw out.

 

Its being cooked as slow as the oven will allow.

 

All thoughts would be greatly appreciated 

 

Thanks a mill 

 

Donna x

Hi Donna

The classic 'chefy' way would be coating/spraying the surface with (ideally)brown sugar (or dextrose or something sugary) -but that would obviously alter taste also (i think for the better-but you customer might not!)

There are various commercially available additives that do the same thing like this  (which I'm sure will be available somewhere in bulk quantities)

Mike