CARROT 'BACON' RECIPE

- Hey, everyone, it's Barry here, welcome to My Virgin
Kitchen, I hope you are well. Today, two worlds collide. A few of you have sent me a recipe for carrot bacon, and it's not bacon wrapped in carrots,
or the other way around, carrots wrapped in bacon,
which might be all right. Now, this is carrot "bacon", so it's one for the veggie/vegans of you amongst us, and I know there'd be a lot of people goin',
"That's not real bacon," but a lot of you wanted to see it, so we're gonna give it a go, it seems pretty quirky indeed, if you want, I have the full method, ingredients, bits and bobs, it's on the website, if you're not there
already, so let's crack on and give it a go, I'm intrigued, almost as intrigued as
Boston is right there.

Boston is just, like,
pondering. (Chuckles) First thing you need is a baking tray, and you can either line
it with some baking parchment or grab one
of these SilPat things. Like, a silicone mat. They are amazing, I can't believe I never had one of these before,
mine was a little bit bigger and I trimmed
it, so you can get these online everywhere, I
kinda feel like I need a My Virgin Kitchen one, yeah.

(Singing) Look, it's a carrot that I have washed. What we're gonna do, this
is gonna be our bacon, okay, we're gonna just take the head off, like so, just leave it right there, nice little hairstyle. Take off the bottom. And then, to actually peel it, we're gonna use one of those Y peelers, and that will also give
us the strips as well of the bacon, okay, this will make sense in about two seconds.

Peeler, like that, okay? So let's just get that outer skin off. All right, so I got all
me bits of carrot there, like so, this can just stay there. So, what I'm gonna do,
this is quite a nice sort of flat-ish shape, and by peeling it using this it gives it a nice thin slice, you can see how thin that is, that is gonna be the
perfect size and shape, apparently, for the bacon,
so we take the peeler, and we just go down, and there we go, one (chuckles) rasher of carrot. So I'll just keep doin' that.

Aw, that's a good one, I like that. It is actually quite
important to try and get as thick and even down
as you can, if you cut at a slight angle, it'll give
it, like, the first one there? Yeah, so there is a little bit of skill. There we go, a big old
pile of carrot bacon, it does actually look quite cool, kinda like a warped shoe horn. So you should be left
with nice carrot strips and what is left, kinda,
if you don't use it all, it could be a nice door
stop, imagine goin' round someone's house and they've got a carrot for a door stop, it could happen, it could be the future, but (chuckles)...

I don't know what that was. What's gonna happen
now is we are gonna put the marinade together in
this bowl that the carrot is gonna be in, and
it's gonna sit in it for a little while and try and become bacon-y. The marinade begins, first up, we go in with a tablespoon
of rapeseed oil. (Makes noise) A tablespoon (makes
noise), sorry, that's not the most appealin' noise right now, of, I didn't think I was recordin' then, phew, this is tahini, okay? This is basically ground sesame
seeds, it's used in hummus.

A tablespoon of maple syrup, oh yeah! Tablespoon of soy sauce. For this one you could use liquid smoke, and if you watch our
vlog you would know that I went out to a supermarket
that's supposed to sell it last night, they
didn't have it, so a good alternative is actually a smoked powder, so obviously smoked paprika, I love paprika, is what we're goin' for, so about a heap to teaspoon of that. All right, in that goes. I think the smoked
paprika's really added that, it is gettin' a smoky vibe right now, so you're gonna get the sweetness and the caramelization with the
maple syrup, the tahini, and the oil's gonna sorta
heat and thicken it up and make it all sort of
caramelised along with the syrup and the salt, the salt? The soy sauce will give
it a bit of a saltiness, so let's give it a mix.

Show you that, like that, oh my gosh. Big, messy thing, look at that. That does smell quite
bacon-y, I'll go with it. A couple of you were
ravin' about this recipe, so I'll keep going.

So, here's what's gonna happen. (Chuckles) We've got our strips of carrot, and I've jolly picked out my favourite eight decent cuts that
I've done out of those, some of 'em were a little
bit pants, if I'm honest. Get 'em in there. Just gently mix it around.

Make sure all of those
strips are fully coated in this marinade, in fact,
we probably got enough to submerge it right in
there, that's quite good, if we can get it to sit right in there. Oh, wow. Like a hot tub of confused carrot flavour. What I'm gonna do, just cling film it up.

You know how good I am with cling film. (Chuckles) Right, so we'll put this in the fridge (makes noise) to marinate for about half an hour. Probably one of the
weirdest things I've ever put in the fridge, but
we'll just go with it, all right, we'll just go with it. All right, so it's just about
to finish off in the fridge, the only thing I've really
done in the meantime, other than do some social media stuff, Snapchat, Instagram stories,
if you're not followin' @myvirginkitchen, I've
decided to change me SilPat thing to baking parchment, 'cause I just feel like
that could be a cool look with the orange against the white, maybe.

So that's it, as long as it's
nonslip, either way is good. Oh, that does smell good, I like that. It's really addictive, that on its own, without the carrot in there. You could eat that, well, not on its own, you could have it as a drink.

Okay, carry on. But all we'll do is take
a rasher of bacon out, like this, oh yeah. I actually called it bacon. I'm falling for this.

And just lay it all along there. All right, so they've all fitted on there, they're nice and stained. I hope you'll agree that is
lookin' a lot more bacon-y. And what we'll do, we have got a fair bit of this left, but we'll just give it each an extra sort of brush
in this chilled marinade, it is really cold, but I'm excited to see what this is gonna do.

Nice. So I've pre-heated my oven
to 200 degrees Centigrade, and that is where these
are goin' right now. So, in that goes. And we'll see it in a jiffy.

So it's in the oven right now,
and I'm thinkin' two things: One, I'm really excited to
see what this tastes like, it might not taste like bacon, but I think it will still be good, second of all, I'm finding the filming
today a little bit tricky. I've been doin' some
cameraperson, female and male interviews at the new
studio, and it's just, I get to use both my arms,
I don't have to worry about the camera anymore! I found it really cool,
so that will be coming as soon as I've done my
interviewing process. Found some really cool people, and it's gonna be a lot of fun. Bacon! Fake bacon! Tell you what, folks,
it's only been 15 minutes and it's done, the smell
in here is smellin' really smoky, like
bacon, let's get it out.

All right, let's do it. Check that out. You see that? That's crazy. I mean, it is crazy, but...

It looks pretty good. So here's what we'll do,
we'll taste it on its own, and then I'll make a
bacon sandwich as well, 'cause I really wanna
see if the mental thing, particularly if there's
any veggies or vegans watching that wanna try
this, if it's similar. Why not? So it's actually still quite soft. If I baked it a little
longer, the caramelization would've probably firmed
that up a little bit more, but to me, I think it
might have tasted a bit too much burnt, so let's give this a go.

The first thing I'm gonna
do is actually put it into my favourite thing ever, which
is like a bacon sandwich. So I'm gonna put maybe
four rashers in there. Bit of brown sauce on it,
because that's the way I like my bacon sandwich. And then we'll try one on its own.

So I'm gonna just see if this works. Hmm, I really fancy a bacon
sandwich for breakfast. Oh, cool! It does look like a bacon sandwich. Not really, guys.

Does taste good, though. Can't quite work it out in this. So let's get our strip on, here it is, so yeah, a little bit wobbly. (Moaning and humming) I think, mentally, in my
head, I'm tryin' to want it to taste and feel more like
bacon than it actually is.

You get the smokiness, you get a teeny bit of salty tang, I think next
time maybe I would lower the amount of maple syrup in there, it's really, it's really
sweet, if I'm honest, but texturewise, it does kinda work. So it's not a bad alternative,
I'm gonna have another piece. You know, it's a bit floppy, like that. There's somethin' about it.

I feel like I could play
around with this and actually make it something much more closer, maybe the ratios need to
be mixed up a bit more. But, you know what, ultimately, it's actually quite a fun thing,
and it's so quick to make, so now that I've done it, it's your turn. I hope you do give it a try,
if you do, send me a picture @myvirginkitchen, maybe
tweak the ingredients a little bit, maybe take a
teeny bit of maple syrup out and let me know what you
think, I would love to know your thoughts, remember to
subscribe for regular recipes and food fun, and yeah, bacon me up. See you next time..