Two ingredients make anything better – bacon and ranch. Wrap both of them around a pretzel and you have the ultimate snack food. Just don’t waste time pretending it’s a cigar or someone will eat the rest of them before you can.
“Bacon-wrapped” is the best advernoun in the culinary world. It works on everything from bacon-wrapped eggs to bacon-wrapped tater tots. It seemed only right to put it to use with something as delicious as pretzels.
There are a plethora of ways to spice up the bacon, but ranch just seemed like the right way to go. Who doesn’t love ranch? Throw in some chili powder and a few other flecks of goodness and you have the ideal coat for your bacon to wear into the oven.
The mix
The dips
The sticks
Let me go ahead and stop the pretzel train right here. I made the mistake the first time around of wrapping the pretzels while the bacon was completely raw. That was a worse decision than that time I just had to go to another bar at 4am.
When they start cooking, all that bacon grease has to go somewhere, and apparently it really wants to go into the pretzel. The whole point of a pretzel is that the bread is supposed to be hard, and that’s not the case once it absorbs a ton of bacon grease. They were more limp than a gay guy back stage at the Victoria’s Secret show. To avoid this obscurely-phrased fate, be sure to partially cook the bacon beforehand.
The first and last pictures are from my second batch in which the bacon was pre-cooked. My initial attempt looked like some sort of mutation. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was an easy fix though, and I’m happy to have made the mistake so that you don’t have to. Just think how embarrassed you would have been if you promised an awesome snack to your friends and then rolled out bacon-wrapped bread pudding.
Tip of the chefs hat to Food.com for the inspiration. I took things a different direction, but that’s the origin.
Ingredients:
- Pretzel rods
- Bacon
- 1 pack ranch dry mix
- 2 tsp chili powder
- 1.5 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp lemon pepper
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Mix ranch, chili powder, garlic powder, and lemon pepper on plate.
- Dip one side of bacon strip in seasoning mix.
- Arrange bacon on foil lined baking tray.
- Cook bacon for 10-15 minutes, be sure it’s still pliable.
- Allow bacon to cool.
- Wrap each pretzel rod with a bacon strip.
- Put foil lined baking tray back in oven on lower rack to catch grease.
- Place wrapped-pretzels directly on oven rack over tray.
- Cook about 10-15 minutes or until bacon is crispy.
- Try your hardest not to bite burning hot bacon-wrapped pretzel.
- Burn mouth.
- Complain.
- Do it again.
- Make “Fool me once comment.”
- Kick yourself for saying something so cliche.
- Eat remaining Bacon-Wrapped Pretzels.