This maple Sriracha bacon situation had our testers throwing out exclamation points and dramatic exultations with abandon. “Killer Bacon!” “Addictive!” “A party in your mouth!” Yep. We’re so confident you’ll love this recipe’s sticky-sweet-salty-spicy results, we feel confident assuring you that everyone you know will feel the same. (It is, after all, bacon.) Consider serving this alongside Mexican Bloody Marys at brunch or at any cocktail party and watch your friends start speaking in exclamations, too.
Kindly note that because of the aforementioned sticky-sweet situation, the bacon isn’t quite as crisp as you may expect. The maple keeps the texture a little more like jerky, which isn’t a bad thing in our books.–Jenny Howard
Sriracha Bacon FAQs
Bacon is pretty darn good on its own, but a little embellishment is often welcome. If you’re a fan of sweet and spicy like the recipe here, try this sweet and spicy bacon. If you want to get adventurous and smoke your own bacon, try this homemade maple-espresso bacon.
If you don’t have any of the ubiquitous Rooster-branded hot sauce on hand, don’t fret. You can still pull off this sweet spicy treat. The best sub for Sriracha is sambal oelek, the thick, spicy paste that’s packed with heat. The biggest difference is that Sriracha has garlic and sugar, whereas sambal oelek has neither. Other than sambal oelek, you can try chili paste, crushed chile flakes, or even cayenne pepper.
Maple Sriracha Bacon
Ingredients
- 8 slices bacon
- 4 tablespoons maple syrup
- 4 tablespoons store-bought or homemade Sriracha sauce
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a large, rimmed sheet pan with heavy-duty foil. Place a wire rack on the foil-lined sheet pan.
- Arrange the bacon on the wire rack so that each slice is flat and not overlapping.
- In a small bowl, mix together the maple syrup and Sriracha. Brush the maple-Sriracha mixture onto both sides of the bacon. You may not need quite all of the mixture. Cook the bacon, rotating the pan partway through cooking, until the edges of the bacon are beginning to caramelize and crisp and the center is cooked as well done as you like it, 25 to 30 minutes.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
My only complaint about this maple Sriracha bacon recipe is that it doesn’t make enough! This is just enough for a couple of people to sample and “quality check” this delicious treat. You need to at least double the portion size to have enough to share with friends!
I used regular grocery store bacon—nothing fancy—but this simple glaze turned it into a gourmet treat. I served it along with pancakes and maple syrup for brunch but it would be great crumbled on a wedge salad, too, if you wanted to go in a more savory direction.
Some pieces were nicely charred on the edges at 30 minutes. The rest I put back in the oven for another 5 minutes to crisp up a little more. The overall texture is rather like jerky—not shatteringly crisp throughout but the edges were crunchy and the center a little toothsome.
A delicious and potentially addictive treat!
The recipe was easy to follow and the resulting bacon was fantastic. I loved the taste. The Sriracha and maple syrup combined to produce an entirely different flavor.
I cooked the bacon to midway between limp and crisp, which gave the bacon a great texture. The ends of the bacon were crisp while the middle was a little less well done. I cooked the bacon for 30 minutes to my preferred doneness. The directions to line the pan with foil and place the bacon on a rack, gave the bacon a great crispness and flavor and made clean-up a breeze.
The only tweak I would make on this maple Sriracha bacon recipe would be to maybe use 3 tablespoons Sriracha and 3 tablespoons maple syrup. I ran out of the mixture while preparing the baking and had to make an additional one tablespoon of each in order to have enough sauce to coat all of the bacon.
Killer bacon! Super easy. One little extra step elevates your bacon to a new level.
I always bake my bacon, it’s so much easier and cleaner–totally hands off. Definitely use a rack and line your pan with foil or parchment. I used thick bacon. The recipe is right, it doesn’t get super crispy but it was nicely caramelized with just a touch of very dark edges. Everyone loved it.
This recipe would add a “fancy” touch to your next brunch–but it’s so easy you can make it anytime.
I cooked the bacon until it was crisp at the ends and chewy in the middle, about 30 minutes. It was amazing. A slightly charred sweet spicy bit of piggy grease.
This maple Sriracha bacon would be terrific to nibble after drinking. It would work for breakfast, but as the strong Sriracha flavor really shines, an afternoon snack or served as nibbles with beer is preferred. I served it to my 4-year-old girl and it was too spicy for her. My 7-year-old boy said it was just right but also wanted a cup of syrup on the side. (Although he prefers most of his meals that way!) Looking at the recipe, I assumed the amount of Sriracha would be too strong for the syrup, but it was a good balance. You can really customize it to your taste, a higher ratio of syrup to Sriracha would also be fab. This is a keeper.
The method of cooking was easy and concise. I may brush the wire rack with oil next time to ease clean-up.
The bacon was a little crisp and a little tender all the way through, except for some pesky burnt ends. The flavor profile is intense, delicious, and not unlike a party in your mouth with all that crisp-tender-salty-sweetness going on. This is a super easy way to kick-up your bacon with ingredients you probably have on hand.
I give this a 9 and not a 10 only because some of my bacon burnt during the 30 minutes and it made me sad.
Maple Sriracha bacon is a nice smoky, sweet, and spicy treat to add to your brunches. Easy to put together and bake as your guests arrive.
The title says it all: Maple-Sriracha Bacon. Recipe couldn’t be easier and clean-up is a breeze too. Hot and sweet combined are a can’t miss and to have that on bacon, well, it would be hard to mess it up.
The other great thing about this recipe is that you can dial up or down the sweet and spicy element to tailor it just to your liking.
The one thing that needs work is the timing. I pulled my bacon out of the oven after about 30 minutes and it looked done. Some of the edges were starting to get pretty dark and I didn’t want to burn them. But when the bacon cooled, it wasn’t very crisp. Guess I’ll have to just try it again!
A vegetarian friend of mine once told me that everything tastes better with bacon. I didn’t delve too deeply into that statement, in part because I agreed with her. Now I have discovered that adding a little bit of sweet and a little bit of heat makes the BLT even better.
The hardest thing about this recipe was opening the bottle of Sriracha. Once I got past that, it was smooth sailing. Prep time was less than 5 minutes. There’s an implication that it makes 8 servings but this is bacon and a lot of it just never actually gets on to the BLT.
The only problem with this recipe was the cook time. Fortunately, I checked it after 20 minutes, and declared it done at that point. I like my bacon crisp, not blackened. Perhaps it was because I was using thin sliced bacon, only about an eighth of an inch thick. Shortening the cooking time only makes me more inclined to reuse the recipe.
The heat was mild, not strong enough to scare off any anti-pepper people. In my next batch, I may use a stronger ratio of Sriracha to syrup.
This bacon is delicious, sweet, spicy, and almost candied with only the edges getting crisp. The maple syrup and Sriracha mixture is exactly enough for 8 pieces of bacon. I used 1/8-inch-thick bacon and pulled it at 26 minutes when the edges started getting quite dark. Keep a close eye on it near the end as it turns dark very quickly. It was nice on it’s own and also chopped in a salad.
