These persimmon bacon bites with rosemary goat cheese are the perfect festive appetizer and only require four ingredients! This post is sponsored by Cavit in partnership with Honest Cooking.
If you’re looking for a craveworthy appetizer to keep your family happy while you finish cooking Christmas dinner or to pass around at a New Year’s Eve party, I have totally got you covered. These persimmon bacon bites are the best app I’ve eaten in recent memory, and are super cute to boot. They pair perfectly with a chilled glass of Cavit’s crisp Pinot Grigio, and the combination is pretty much guaranteed to put even the grinchiest of grinches in the holiday spirit. When you’re snacking on fruit with bacon and herbed goat cheese and sipping on tasty Italian wine, there’s just no way not to feel festive.
I just discovered persimmons this year and they’ve quickly become my new favorite fruit. They taste kind of like a delicious mashup between a mango and a papaya, and I find them incredibly addictive. I used fuyu persimmons here and haven’t had a chance to try other varieties yet, so I recommend finding fuyus for this recipe. They’re the ones that are kind of squat like little pumpkins and are not pointed at the bottom.
When I’m eating a persimmon plain, I like to let it get nice and soft so the insides are custardy and smooth. However, when you’re making persimmon bacon bites, you want to choose persimmons that are still a bit firm so the slices will hold together well. Once roasted, they’ll have that smooth texture of a perfectly ripe raw persimmon with an even deeper sweet flavor. The hint of rosemary in the goat cheese makes these bites taste fresh and seasonal, and the bacon ties everything together both literally and figuratively.
An ice cold glass of Cavit’s fruity Pinot Grigio is ideal for washing down all this deliciousness. Cavit uses 100% Pinot Grigio grapes grown in Italy to craft this wine, which undergoes cold fermentation in thermo-conditioned tanks. That’s what makes this Pinot Grigio taste so fresh. I find wine production fascinatingly mysterious, and love imagining what things like cold fermentation might actually look like. These are the things I muse about while sipping a glass of Cavit wine and nibbling on persimmon bacon bites…
If you’re looking for an appetizer that pairs well with Cavit’s Select Red Blend for guests who prefer red wine, check out the above video. For a grain-free version, you could put the braised lamb on top of paleo-friendly crackers like Simple Mills instead of puff pastry or croutons.
Oh, and one more great thing about these persimmon bacon bites? They actually reheat really well! I stashed leftovers in the fridge for a day or two and then reheated them on a piece of foil in the toaster oven. They tasted just as amazing as they did fresh from the oven.
I hope your holiday season is full of scrumptious snacks and sips like these! Happy Holidays!
- 3 slightly underripe fuyu persimmons
- 10-12 slices of bacon, sliced in half crosswise
- 6 ounces goat cheese
- 1½ teaspoons minced fresh rosemary
- Slice the persimmons into rounds a little less than ¼ inch thick, then cut the rounds in half to form semicircles. Count the pieces to determine how much bacon you'll need--each full slice of bacon is enough for two persimmon semicircles.
- Preheat the oven to 375°F and line a baking sheet with foil for easy cleanup. Arrange the halved bacon slices on the sheet and bake for about 10 minutes, until starting to brown but still very bendy. Transfer the bacon to a plate lined with paper towels to drain and cool. Increase the oven temperature to 400°F.
- Mix the goat cheese and rosemary in a small bowl. Top each persimmon slice with a teaspoonful of herbed goat cheese rolled into a ball. Wrap a piece of bacon around each one and secure it with a toothpick.
- Place the persimmon bacon bites on a clean baking sheet lined with foil or parchment and roast for 15-20 minutes, or until the bacon is cooked through. Cool for at least 5 minutes and serve warm with chilled white wine.
This post is sponsored by Cavit in partnership with Honest Cooking. Thank you so much for supporting the sponsors that keep A Calculated Whisk up and running!
I can never figure out what to do with the underripe persimmons! This is a wonderful idea.
Thank you, Rachel!
These look out of this world! Plus your photography is unbelievable – I want everything you make!
Thank you so much, Michele!
Ahhh yet another delectable delight made with bacon! How could anyone possibly resist? The perfect sweet and salty bite.
Thank you, Carrie!!
I love this recipe so much! Fuyu persimmons are one of my favorites, we have a tree in our front yard 🙂 but someone took all of the fruit this year 🙁 Hundreds of persimmons gone overnight. I bet these are amazing, I love bacon wrapped small bites like this! Such a lovely flavor combo with that creamy goat cheese and fragrant rosemary.
Oh no–so sad! I can’t believe someone would take ALL of your persimmons! Hope you can enjoy these next year or with some store-bought fruit :/
This is perfect! Clients at work bring me persimmons from their trees and I honestly never know what to do with them. Now I have a recipe for them that looks yummy! Bookmarking.
What a nice gift! I think you’ll really enjoy these, although I love persimmons plain, too.
I often wonder what I can do with persimmons and now I have a new way to enjoy this wonderful fruit. Thanks so much Becky !
Hope you enjoy them, ChihYu!
I was *just* telling someone about these the other day! I love love love this idea!
Thank you so much, Taesha!
These look so delicious and like the perfect appetizer! Happy New Year, Becky!
Thank you, Jessica! Happy New Year to you, too!
I need to learn how to pick out a ripe, non-bitter Persimmon since these bites look amazing and I’ve heard such good things about them. The only time I’ve tried one I must have gotten the bitter, unripe variety because I spit it out and wondered what the heck everyone was raving about, haha! I will make that my mission this winter to find the good type and try these delicious looking bites out!
Just look for the squat Fuyu persimmons–they’re more forgiving and you can eat them before they’re totally soft. Roasting also helps soften them up! Happy persimmon hunting!
Elegant, simple, delicious. This is on my NYE menu! Thank you!
Thanks, Christina! Let me know how you like it!
What a special dish! My mouth is watering thinking of those flavor blends!!!
Thank you, Renee!
You just reminded me that I haven’t had a single persimmon all year and really must change that! I’m completely defenseless against anything bacon-wrapped, and that goat cheese sounds soooo good! Plus, I am so on that bottle of Grig! A perfect pairing, indeed!
Thank you so much, Julia! Merry Christmas!
Never used persimmons for cooking, but this is making me want to try!
I just want persimmons to be in everything now! So addicted.
I discovered Persimmons this year as well and fell in love with them.. interestingly, i found their flavor similar to the flesh of young coconut! However, didn’t know how to pick them so i got lucky with one and the others were raw and full of tannin. That was not a good experience! That is when I learnt about avoiding eating unripe Persimmon. These are such cute little bites. Beautiful pics
Thank you so much, Jenny! They don’t exactly taste like coconut to me but they do taste quite tropical, which is interesting because they actually grow in temperate climates.
I love persimmons so much! These little bites look like the perfect way to take advantage of them while they’re still around 🙂 as always, your photography is SO gorgeous!
Thank you so much, Rachel! I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on persimmons all these years.
Ok, ok, these shots are GORGEOUS!! I’ve yet to try a persimmon, well besides the time my 8th grade literature teacher brought one to class and gave a sample to everyone. It was SO bitter! I think I need to try this recipe just to put that out of my memory. I noticed that Earth Fare had a slew of them yesterday so I’m totally making these this weekend.
Thank you so much, Lauren! When I read up on persimmons it mentioned that some varieties, like the hachiya (the ones that are pointed on the bottom), are astringent, which means they’re bitter and chalky when they’re not fully ripe. Fuyus aren’t like that, though, so I think they’re a safer bet! Hope you love this as much as I did.