The BEST BLT Recipe

The Best BLT Recipe doesn’t involve any bacon at all. Wait, what?!? That’s right, we substitute pork jowl for the bacon to make a JLT sandwich and it makes the best BLT sando I’ve ever had. We cook the jowl in a cast iron pan on a travel grill and put it on toasted sourdough with some red and yellow tomato, crisp iceberg lettuce and we skip the mayo for some garlic aioli. The better BLT, if you will. 

Scroll down for the step by step, pic by pic, foolproof instructions including that mayo substitute. 

Let’s face it, if you are looking for the BEST BLT recipe, you dig bacon as much as I do.

Let me share some of my favorite recipes that feature bacon:

Bacon Wrapped Chicken Lollipops

Bacon Pineapple Ribs

Jerk Ribs Wrapped in Bacon

Bacon Wrapped Potato Volcanoes

Bacon Wrapped Grilled Cheese

Editor’s Note ~ Absolutely this BEST BLT recipe can be cooked inside in a pan on the stove or one of those counter top griddles. 

The BEST BLT Recipe Ingredients

• 1 lb of sliced pork jowl
• Spray oil (substitute butter)
• Fresh tomatoes
• Garlic aioli
• Your favorite lettuce (I used iceberg because I like lots of crunch)

Other Needed Gear:

• Cast iron skillet

How to Make the BEST BLT Recipe

In a 400F skillet, fry up the pork jowl meat. Spritz the sourdough with spray oil and toast on each side right over the coals. Then spread the garlic aioli over the bread and top with the crispy pork jowl, lettuce and tomato and enjoy the BEST BLT ever!

Initially, crank up the grill to medium high heat (400F (+/- 25F) and set the cast iron pan on the grill to come up to temp.

For this cook, I used my Everdure Cube, which is a sweet little travel grill that comes with an amazing carrying case and a little storage area on top perfect for all the BLT/JLT fixins. 

Jowl is not the easiest to find. I had to go to three different stores to find it. But man is it worth it.

More on that in a minute. 

Layer down the strips of jowl, which looks a lot like bacon, but with less fat:

While the pork jowl sizzles in the cast iron, slice the tomatoes and get some lettuce ready to assemble our sammiches:

That white container above, fits in the top of the unlit Everdure Cube and is great for keeping ingredients close at hand while cooking say at the campsite or on the beach. 

Then, let’s toast up some sourdough.

Spritz each side of the bread with the spray oil and set the bread right over the coals, but don’t go far. 

The bread, even with the oil spritz, will toast very, very quickly:

Also, rotate the bread as needed to find the hot spots on the cooker.

Toast on both sides and pull the sourdough bread off the grill:

Remove the crispy jowl from the cast iron skillet:

Garlic Aioli

Time for the better-than-mayo sandwich spread – garlic aioli:

Garlic aioli is manna from heaven!

Then, layer the jowl, lettuce and tomato to make our JLT:

Finally, I sliced this one in half to make for a better picture and to share with my helpers:

Indeed, if you want to see how great this sando is, scroll down below the recipe card to see my reaction to my first bite

The BEST BLT Recipe Rundown:

What makes this so good, well, the jowl meat is meatier and just has a better flavor than the typical slice of mass market bacon. The small batch stuff out there is a different story. This stuff for instance, is amazing: Bill-E’s Bacon which a friend of mine makes. On top of the crispy jowl is the crunch of the lettuce as well as the toasted sourdough.The garlic aioli is the savory icing on this BLT (JLT).

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Recipe Card:

Print Recipe

The BEST BLT Recipe

The best BLT Recipe doesn't have any bacon at all. It has jowl instead which makes it a JLT Sandwich. We cook this sando on the grill with a cast iron pan.

Cook Time15 minutes mins

Course: Bacon, Entree, Main Course, Sandwich

Cuisine: American, American Fare, BLT, Sando, Sandwich

Keyword: Aioli, Bacon, BEST BLT, Best BLT Recipe, BLT, BLT Recipe, cast iron, Cast Iron Pan, Cast Iron Skillet, Cheese Stuffed Tomatoes, Everdure, Everdure Cube, Garlic Aioli, Iceberg, JLT, JLT Sandwich, Jowl, Lettuce, Mayo, Pork Jowl, Sammich, Sando, Sourdough, Sourdough Bread, Tomatoes, Travel Grill

Servings: 6 People

Equipment

• Cast Iron Skillet

Ingredients

• 1 lb Pork jowl Sliced
• Fresh tomatoes
• Sourdough bread
• Spray oil
• Garlic aioli

Instructions

• Bring the grill up to medium high heat - 400F (+/- 25F) and set the cast iron skillet on the grill to come up to temp. When the skillet is hot, layer down the pork jowl
• While the jowl cooks, slice the tomatoes and tear off some lettuce.
• Then spritz the bread on each side with the oil. Toast the oiled bread on each side right over the coals.
• Once the bread is toasted and the jowl is crispy, remove both from the grill and assemble the sando.
• Spread the garlic aioli on the toasted sourdough and then layer with jowl, lettuce and tomato and enjoy.

Video

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

See Full Bio

BBQ Grilling

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This article was initially published on: June 24, 2024