The holidays just wouldn’t be the same without special recipes. You know the ones. Is it your grandmother’s stuffing or your mom’s glazed ham? Certain dishes bring back so many memories it’s hard to think of the holiday meal without them. This Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts recipe is one of mine.
When I was young my family would get together at my grandparents house for holidays. They had 13 children, so you can imagine the amount of people that came, and the FOOD! Someone always brought these little babies to the meal.
Time passed and people moved away. We stopped meeting at my grandparents house every year. So, I HAD to have the recipe and make sure my favorite treats still made it to our holiday family dinners. They bring back a lot of old memories for me, but they’re also the BEST things you’ll ever taste!
Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts Recipe
Recipe courtesy of my Aunt Kathy
Ingredients:
2 Packages of Bacon (I use reduced sodium)
2 Cans of Whole Water Chestnuts
3/4 Cup Ketchup
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
Tooth Picks
Directions:
First, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Next, drain the water chestnuts and pat them dry. The bacon strips need to be cut in half – I use kitchen scissors to do it quickly. Then I like to prepare a cutting board with everything I need for wrapping, plus line a couple of baking dishes with parchment paper.
Asking for help with the wrapping makes it go a lot faster. So, my daughter steps up to the plate and rolls them with me. I told Audrey to stick the toothpick in the bacon before adding the sauce because that is what I’ve always done, but it might be easier to add the toothpicks after.
Audrey also made the sauce, which is just ketchup and brown sugar (it makes them have a slight barbecue taste). You could even experiment and try your favorite barbecue sauce instead. I spooned about 1 teaspoon of it on each bacon wrapped water chestnut.
I cooked mine for 35 minutes, but you will want to check in at 25 because they can burn fast. Remove them from the pan immediately.
These are sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy. The only problem with them is that there are never enough. You have to try them this holiday!
What’s your must have holiday recipe?
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These look yummy. I make some similiar except I soak the water chesnuts overnight in soy sauce. Then I poor off soysauce and roll them in white sugar. Then wrap in bacon and cook like yours. My family is always disappointed if I don’t bring these to potlucks.
My Aunt makes them with brown sugar and soy sauce. I’ve never tried them like that. Do they have an asian flavor?
my sister introduced me to these years ago – aren’t they amazing…they sound weird, yes —- but are SO good! yum – making me hungry now!
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How many oz. are the cans? I’m going to be making these for Thanksgiving tomorrow and just realized – I never knew how many ounces the cans should be. Um…..oops? Lol.
I think they are like 8 oz or so. Just know that whenever I make these there are never enough to go around so if you have more than 10 people at your meal, I would make extra! Wrapping the chestnuts in bacon is a no-brainer. With the sauce, just do a 1 to 1 ratio of brown sugar and ketchup if you run out of what the recipe calls for.
Alright, thank you for responding! Just put ’em in the oven. 🙂 Do they reheat well?