Make Bacon Great Again!

Over the last two weeks, I’ve learned one very important thing: how to make tremendous bacon. It’s quite honestly the best bacon I ever had. It’s the best my family has ever had. Trust me, this is the best bacon you’ve ever had.

Now everybody knows that bacon is hugely popular:

1. On the show, United States of Bacon, they highlight these bacon towers.
2. You can buy bacon steaks, but I don’t think they will catch on.
3. There’s a bacon world competition where it’s treated like the slab of meat it is. As the website reads, “Bacon is no longer just a food… it’s a way of life.”
4. You can even play a game of bacon

Enough about bacon’s popularity. You want to learn how to make bacon great again.

First, I need to explain why I felt my bacon was broken. For years, I’ve used a George Foreman Grill to make bacon. When it broke, I replaced it with this Cuisinart Griddler. (We were sold on the dishwasher safe plates.) Bacon came out in a clumpy mess. Grease overflowed the top or spilled out the back. If I overcooked it by even a little bit, it was burnt to a crisp. If I undercooked it, it was mostly stringy fat.

Despite this I continued to make bacon. Bacon is like pizza and that other thing: even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. To put it another way, “It was the best of foods, it was the worst of foods…”

My bacon needed real change.

I thought about possible solutions. There was the traditional method: frying in a pan on a stove. However, it seemed like I’d have to actively flip the bacon and deal with painful bacon splatters. I bet that the result would be fine bacon, but I had gotten used to the passive bacon cooking method of the double-sided grillers.

I went on the Internet and looked around for some better ideas. There was one place that suggested putting bacon in an old gym sock and microwaving it. I don’t even know where someone would come up with such an idea. More importantly they didn’t provide any logic for why this might be good bacon, any evidence or any sources. I think it might have been written by this guy. Hopefully millions of people aren’t making gym sock, microwave bacon.

So I decided to dig for some better sounding ideas. That’s when I came across the winner… making bacon in the oven.

Take a step inside my Bacon University. (For you, today only, the price is free.)

Making bacon in an oven is about as simple as it gets. You put the bacon a rack. I put some aluminum foil underneath it make clean-up easy. I just backed it for around 20 minutes at 400 degrees. (I have no patience for pre-heating.) Take it out and enjoy. It takes a little more time, but it is worth it.

As a follow-up test, I decided to go with my convection toaster. It’s small and I theorize is more economical than a big oven. Unfortunately it can’t do a lot of bacon.

Here’s the before picture:

Here’s the after picture:

I try curl the aluminum foil around the bacon so as to limit the splatter.

The toaster oven is almost as good as the real oven. I think the big difference is that the toaster oven isn’t on a raised rack like the conventional oven.

I should note that because I’m frugal, I buy the cheapest bacon I can find. That’s usually Aldi, but sometimes Shaws is running a special. If possible get the thick cut of bacon. Like hair, you don’t want it to be thin. That can lead to a bit of a mess. I’m sure that if ponied up the money for some butcher quality bacon, it would be amazing. I’m not sure I can handle that.

It’s worth noting that bacon isn’t one of the healthiest foods. Some might even say that it is downright bad for you. I can’t say that I disagree.

Did you learn anything interesting in that last couple of weeks? If so, please let me know in the comments.