I got the idea for a “prik khing B.L.T.” from the popular Thai dish “pad prik khing moo” which is a stir-fry using prik khing curry paste and sliced pork belly. Spiciness and sweetness are the dominant tastes in this dish. Pork belly is basically uncured bacon, and so it was just natural to think the prik khing flavors would work in B.L.T. form.

My go to brand for curry pastes is “Maesri.” This is a good quality Thai export. Maesri offers a myriad of curry pastes – red, yellow, green . . .. The prik khing one has a light green label and is found in almost all Asian specialty markets in the Portland area. (I’ll touch on my favorite markets in a future post.)

Thick cut bacon works best. I mixed one can of the curry paste with the bacon and then laid each piece of bacon on a sheet pan. I sprinkled brown sugar all over the bacon and thinly sliced kafir lime leaves as well. Lime leaves are an essential ingredient to the prik khing dish. I baked the bacon at 425 degrees for about 40 minutes.

The bacon is super tender almost like super soft jerky. The color is a beautiful reddish brown. I could probably crisp up the bacon in a frying pan, but this soft texture worked well for this sandwich.

You can’t have a great B.L.T. without mayo. To incorporate more of the prik khing dish flavors I added lime zest (the actual kafir lime is hard to find here, so lime works well) and thinly sliced kafir lime leaves. I used kewpie mayo which has a nice light texture. The mayo has very bright and tart citrusy flavor that cuts the sweetness of the bacon. It’s quite a delicious flavor combo.

For the bread I used sourdough, again the tartness from the bread pairs well with the bacon. Standard iceberg lettuce and tomato slices, finished off this super awesome sandwich. It’s truly delicious.

Ingredients List:

1.)Maesri prik khing curry paste

2.) Thick cut bacon

3.) brown sugar

4.) kafir lime leaves

5.)lime zest

6.) mayo

7.) lettuce

8.)tomato

9.)sourdough bread

Wow! Only 9 things needed to make a super unique B.L.T.