I look at three more techniques in this article (using a fourth cooking method, low heat pan frying, as a control): Microwaving with a Makin' Bacon dish, grilling, and slow baking.
Method 1: Microwaving with a Makin' Bacon dishThere are many specialty dishes designed for microwaving bacon. Some are simply plastic plates with grooves cut in them to catch grease. This one, the Makin' Bacon dish (about $10), elevates the bacon on poles. As many as a eighteen strips of bacon (according to the manufacturer), can be cooked at a time on this apparatus (although I think my bacon must be wider than their bacon because only a dozen of my strips would fit).
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Following the instructions on the Makin' Bacon box, I covered the bacon with a paper towel to reduce potential splatter.
I then microwaved it on high for 90 seconds. The bacon at the top (where it bends over the beam, was thoroughly cooked (almost overcooked). However, some of the fatty parts were still soft and partially unrendered. The texture of the bacon was thick and crunchy (similar to the microwaved bacon from the first test). There was also a slight off flavor to the bacon indicative of heating the bacon to too high of a temperature. It is definitely a very fast way to cook and with the Makin Bacon dish, a reasonable number of pieces can be cooked at the same time.As advertised, the bacon grease dripped down into the plastic container. The instructions recommend pouring out the bacon grease but why waste a good thing? After the grease cools, simply spoon it out into a storage container and store in the refrigerator. The grease collected was fairly clean with some small pieces of bacon in it.
Method 2: Grilling
I prepared a grill with low heat (about 300-350 degrees) and laid out the bacon onto the cooking surface.
Flipping the bacon every five minutes, they reached doneness in twenty minutes time.With this method, the meaty portions were chewy (but not overly so) while the fat was light and crisp. There were also no off flavors to the bacon. Because of the texture and flavor, this was Tina's favorite cooking method.
Because the bacon grease dripped down into the grill, there was no grease to collect and save afterward; there was also no clean up required. Depending on the size of your grill, you can cook a great deal of bacon at once.
Method 3: Baking at low temperatures
I seemed to have lost the pictures that accompanied this baking technique - but their not much to look at anyway, it's just an oven.
I laid out strips of bacon onto a wire rack and positioned a wire rack on a foil lined half sheet pan. I placed the pan in an oven preheated to 200°F (93°C) and waited. The theory was that the low heat would penetrate the bacon slowly and as the bacon cooked the fat would render, but without increasing the bacon temperature to a level where the preserving agents of cured meat begin to react and form new compounds producing an off taste (and potentially carcinogenic substances - but more chemicals such as ascorbic acid or erythorbic acid are added these days to help mitigate these effects).
Unfortunately, I do not know how long the bacon was in the oven because I forgot to look at the time and fell asleep. My best estimate is that the bacon baked for about 3 hours.
The baking resulted in extremely straight pieces of bacon that I found to have exceptional taste and flavor as compared to the pan frying and grilling (the microwaved bacon's off taste was really apparent next to the baked bacon). The texture was crispy throughout. Since flavor and texture were great, this is my favorite cooking method. (Tina prefers a little chewier meat and still likes the grilled method the best.)
The long cooking time means this method is best for cooking bacon in large quantities (multiple pans) and then bagging and refrigerating them for future use. The bacon grease collected from the half sheet pan was pure white and completely devoid of charred bits.
Method 4: Pan frying
As a control, I cooked the bacon in the same way as the "winning" method from the first bacon test - pan frying. I placed three strips of bacon in a cold pan and placed it over low heat.
After fifteen minutes of cooking while turning the bacon occasionally, the bacon was done. The bacon was light and crispy with a little chewiness to the meat. The grilled method's results came closest to this bacon. The bacon grease remaining in the pan had a pale gray-brown color and was spotted with charred bits and pieces of bacon.
Conclusions
If you're in a rush, microwaving works - but for the best flavor and texture either grill or bake (in advance). If you own a propane grill, cooking bacon over the grill is easier and more convenient than doing it on a stove top. However, if you don't mind spending the time, baking produces the best results with pure bacon grease for use later (may I suggest clam chowder?).
(baking) meat consistently produces the best flavor. This even in steaks normally grilled.
I bake with no condiments and no
wire rack. More like a bbq with no
sauce. Sauces can be added when eating, and varied. A variac on a toaster oven or contact grill and a good thermometer take the guess work out and more even heat.
20 amp VARIAC I use.
http://store.yahoo.com/webtronics/varacouttran.html
I'm not familiar with the bacon that is sold/served in Australia. American bacon is cut from the belly, cured or smoked. The fat content is about 50% (eye-balling it, not actually measured). Generally streaks and clumps of meat are surrounded by ample areas of fats.
Canadian bacon is cut from the loin and in comparison is not fatty at all. It has a different texture and taste (almost like ham) when compared to American bacon.
Perhaps the bacon sold in Australia is like Canadian bacon?
A B says put your bacon in a cold oven and pre heat to 400 i leave it in about 12 minutes and i'v tired most of the other methods and find this to be successful for flavor plus i even just use my toaster oven if all i want is a little and ajust the time to suit your tastes
Did I mention that my consumption of paper products has gone down to a third of what it is (paper towels, TP!) since those two joined the Army and moved out? That was one third of the family using two thirds of the paper products.
It's the Army's problem now. Skin_Colorz_PDT_01
andrew
consciousnessofstream@yahoo.com
Since this is an engineers cooking site, I will suggest another approach: Connect a clip to each end of a strip and measure its resistance. As the moisture leaves, resistance should increase. This could be used to make an automatic slow cooker, using a large light bulb for heat in an insulated box. Unless you use stainless steel clips, you would sacrifice one strip.
There was a device sold in the 70's that heated a hot dog by inserting sharp metal points into it and running straight house current through it for about a minute. It tasted awful, and there was no browning. Slow oven cooking creates taste.
That may be true for 3 strips, but if you cook a full package, the grease will build up in the bottom of your grill and eventually run out the bottom (if you gave a gas grill)... theres supposed to be a little bucket to collect this (comes with most grill kits) but I dont know many guys who bothered to put it on.
I dont cook much with charcoal, but I suspect that the grease would end up mixing with the ash and make for a fun cleaning job as well.
Personally, I like it on the griddle... theres no better way as far as I'm concerned. Though, I am intrigued, I think I'm going to have to try it.
Here in the UK we also get "Back bacon", which has much more meat. Maybe it's just the USA that is bacon-poor? I've had decent bacon in NZ and Europe.
Excellent site, by the way. I like the logical layout of the recipies.
- notmyopinion
same features, just not the brand name or price tag) and I recently tried
cooking some bacon on it.
The result was probably the best bacon I've ever cooked.
Thats not really saying a lot. After reading this article I learned that
I've probably been doing it wrong all these years. (cooking it over too
high heat )
I did two batches of bacon on my iGF.
The first batch I started with the grill cold. I layed out as many slices
as I could fit comfortably. Then I closed the lid and plugged it in.
I started checking it for done-ness by eyeball after about 4 minutes.
By 5 or 6 minutes total cooking time, the bacon was done.
For the second batch I just put more raw bacon on the already hot iGF.
The cooking time was reduced a bit. Other than that, the results were
pretty much the same.
The bacon came out wonderfully tender crispy (personally I can't stand
chewy bacon) without being over cooked. Since it's constrained by the
grill while cooking it comes out nicely flat. Due to the nature of the
grill, the grease drains away while cooking so the bacon isn't greasy.
Lastly, since the system is closed while cooking, there is little
opportunity for splatter.
On my particular grill, cleanup is a Pain In The Posterior. It doesn't
disassemble at all. Being an electric appliance I can't just toss it into
a sink of hot water. There are other, more expensive, models with
removable cooking surfaces which are dishwasher safe.
Overall, I'd say using an electric clamshell style grill to cook bacon
works very well. I wouldn't recommend running out to buy one JUST
to cook bacon. If you do run out to buy one, choose wisely. Consider cleanup.
After reading this post on your second wave of tests on cooking bacon, I still think my method is the best...the one I posted in your Bacon I post. Check it out.
Now this is mighty hard to come by these days so you may have to find some farmers or backcountry smokehouse folks who will sell it to you. My favorite was in the next town over and they would take me into the smoking rooms and open a door to a smoker. There would be a small pile of hickory sawdust smoldering on the floor and hanging above were many slabs of sow belly.
I would ask the curing man to pull me down one he thought was best and he generally would get me a nice on. I never had it sliced by them but just took the whole slad wrapped in paper home. It was strong enough that the whole pickup would smell like hickory smoke.
Now to cook it. I would take a real real sharp butcher knife and cut a slice bout 1/8 inch thick or maybe a bit thicker. You never never want thin bacon. I would either cut on thru the rind (outer skin) , then slice that off later or fillet about 2 inches with the flat of the knife along the top of the rind.
Next goes some pure lard into the 8 or 9 inch cast iron skillet. This skillet must NEVER be touched by women's hands. They will ruin it with soap and remove the seasoning. Never let them touch it and it will never stick, long as you clean it right afterwards.
Bring the lard up to heat and put the bacon in the pan. If your temperature is just right and enough lard(to just cover the bacon) it will never pop or splatter and also because all the liquid in it has been cured out!!
This bacon will not shrink either. What goes in the skillet is the same size as what comes out. You then look for when the fat parts of the bacon tend to get done. Its a judgement call anyway and you will learn. You then put it on a platter on top of some folded paper towels and then another to pat the top. This removes the extra grease and results in a certain brittleness. No chewieness. Don't want that. I like mine to be at the point where I can snap it in two. Not burned either. Just right is what I want.
You will also notice that with this good bacon that there will be NOTHING sticking to the bottom of the skillet. What that is with normal bacon is the carbon from the sugar burning. You don't want that either. No sugar cured bacon. No sir.
Now the hard part. No a lot of folks can eat this type of old fashioned bacon. It may be a bit too salty for them or too smoky. But once you get to like it you won't be able to live without it. City bacon will just not work for you anymore.
Now with the bacon grease in the skillet you can do many things. You never dispose of it. You first can fry you some eggs. Over easy or sunnyside up. Let the grease cool down a bit. Use a spoon or metal spatula to flip grease onto the top of the egg and it will cook perfectly. Put it on a plate and pat with a paper towel then pepper it.
The leftover bacon drippings(grease) can be used to season a lot of vegetables or to make cornbread with(also in the skillet). You can season turnip greens with it or collards or whatever. Green beans too. You can also put it in a qt. mason jar and save it in the icebox.
BTW making good cornbread is a lost art. Its getting just the right amount in the skillet, no sugar and no flour. Just bacon drippings, Martha White cornmeal(white only) and one egg and some milk. Got to have just the right amount of milk. When baked if too thick won't taste right nor if too thin. Let it bake a tad too long and its coarse. Get everything just exactly right and you will eat the whole pan full. Save some to crumble in a glass of buttermilk with salt and pepper on the top. Heaven. I mean heaven.
I can cook up a pot of white beans with a ham shank and a pan of cornbread and some fried potatoes and I am back on the farm. Well I still live on the farm but you know what I mean.
Round here if you go to the church fellowship dinners you will get the best food you ever ate. This is cooked by older farm wives the old fashioned way.
This is the way I have cooked bacon all my life.
To clean the skillet after pouring off the drippings. Hold it under the cold water faucet and wipe with a paper towel. It will have a slight sheen of animal fat on the surface. Put it in your over to store it. I keep all my cast irons skillets there. For just myself I use a little skillet. Maybe 5 inches or so.
With the white beans and cornbread you got to have a good white onion or Valdia onion. Can't never get too much black pepper on white beans, some say.
Again I must say. Don't try this with city bacon. Not the same.
Now that many of the local smokehouse folks are out of business I am considering building one myself. A small metal one out back. My friend made one and it was easy. Got the plans out of Mother Earth some time back.
The slower bacon is cooked, the more flavorful it is. However, as a compromise between flavor and speed, I find that a medium oven works well. My method is to stack the bacon in two-strip piles in a cold, ungreased pan, put in a cold oven and turn the oven to 350 F (gas mark 4ish). Depending on the thickness of your bacon and how crispy you like it, it is cooked in about 15 minutes, and it renders enough fat out so you have a respectable amount of dripping for later use. If you like very well-done bacon, you should remember that baked bacon does continue to cook for about a minute after it's removed from the heat--so take it out a little early to avoid a charred mess.
I miss British bacon. On the other hand, since I save bacon drippings for other uses, there's not that much waste from American streaky bacon. Just have to cook more slices to make a decent sandwich.
Definitely. I live in Pennsylvania and get mine from an Amish farmer who still makes REAL bacon.
Now this I have to disagree with. My HUSBAND is the one who would have the cast-iron skillet soaking in a sink of double-strength detergent, not me. He actually tried to run my good cornbread skillet through the dishwasher! I would almost call that grounds for divorce....
The Real Canadian Bacon Co. can be reached at either the following web site: www.realcanadianbacon.com, or by phone at 1-888-BACON-01 and it is a uniquely delicious product (fantastic for bacon/lettuce/tomato sandwiches).[/url]
My Grandfather always has bacon with the "rind" on at his house in SW Arkansas. I'm sure that he bought it from the local butcher. It was always an exotic treat.
I believe what you are talking about is hog jawl. You can ask your grandpa about it. If he is an oldtimer than grew up on a farm, he might know that hog jawl is eaten on New Years Day along with black eyed peas with a coin in them for good luck.
Hog jawl can be bought in a Kroger or Publix or larger grocery store from time to time. They usually cut it too thin tho. It should have a thick skin on it that takes a long time to completely chew up. You can cut the skin off and chew it seperately during the day to get the bacon taste. It will help you not be hungry between meals if thick enough and cooked right.
is fill up an empty cardboard egg carton with bacon drippings.
Put it under the wood and light it! Just as good as lighter fluid.
That is why microwaving above the floor plane of a microwave oven is preferred. Exciting water molecules is actually a safer way to cook these meats that are known to be high in preservatives. If you can get rid of the fat - all the better.
A favorite saying of mine: "Everything tastes better with bacon, even bacon."
Take a pyrex dish or bowl. I prefer the large wide mixing bowls since you can fit more slices in per batch and only have to clean the bowl once at the end of all of your cooking. The wide opening also gives you the advantage of fitting whole slices of bacon if your microwave is large enough. Place a bamboo rack on top of the bowl. I have also used wooden spoons and bamboo skewers before, but they can be a pain to use since they roll if you're not careful while placing the bacon. Place two stacked paper towels on top of the bacon to keep it from splattering in your microwave. Cook the bacon in your microwave for about 4-5 minutes at 70% power. Experiment with the power settings and time to find what works best for you. I use a lower power to more evenly cook the bacon. Most of the fat will drip into the bowl. Clean up is remarkably easy. Dump the fat into some empty soup cans and let them cool before you throw them away. Use some dish soap to get the residue from the bowl. I usually handwash the bamboo rack as well, but you could place the bowl and rack in a dishwasher, too, for a more thorough clean.
Pros:
+ Your bacon will be less greasy.
+ Easy to clean and makes no mess.
+ Using the microwave timer, you can note exact times required for different levels of cooking: limp bacon for sandwiches, crisp bacon for a breakfast side. This makes future cooking a breeze.
Cons:
- The bacon can tend to curl downward at the ends. You can correct for this by using a bamboo rack, or by better placement of the wooden spoons or bamboo skewers.
Disadvantages of other methods:
Skillet:
- Constant supervision
- Splatter
- Greasier
Oven:
- Harder to clean
- Greasier
- Takes a long time
Broiler:
- Same as oven, except for the tendency for burning as Michael notes in the article
George Foreman grill:
- Seems to take a while and you can't fit that many slices at once.
- Also, I only have the small version and have to cut the bacon in half.
Special microwave dishes for bacon:
- They tend to melt after the first batch or two! I've tried the one above and several others.
- Can only cook 4-5 slices at a time, usually.
- The vertical ones leave your bacon looking funny with a "V" shape. Matter of taste(pun not intended), I guess.
Grilling:
+ The bacon tastes good.
+ Can cook ALL of your bacon at once if your grill is large enough
- Takes a while, but the results can be worth it.
- Messy to clean. You DO clean your grill, don't you?
http://www.makinbacon.com/purchase.htm
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil. Lay bacon directly on the foil, not touching. Turn bacon over at about 10-12 minutes; very thin bacon may be done now, thicker bacon will take as long as 12-16 minutes total. Remove to a paper-towel-lined plate. You can eat it right away, or put it aside for a bit and, covering it with a paper towel, reheat it for 30 seconds in the microwave (for those of you who have trouble getting the timing right with multiple dishes).
Personally, I usually trim most of the fat off the streaky end and keep just the pink bits. Oh, and pan frying it is usually best (although I haven't tried baking it for 3 hours!)
Regards,
Aussie in America
The general American trend to cook the bacon till completely crisp is not the common way of cooking it over here though. We generally cook it till the fat has gone crispy but the meat is still chewy.
I think grilled bacon tastes far and away the best between grilled baked and fried. Never tried the microwave method though. will have to give it a go.
The first article mentioned broiling. What is that?
Broiling, in this context, means to cook food directly under a heat source. In American ovens, an additional heating element is often placed at the top of the oven (either a gas jet or electrical heating element) under which you place food. The heat is very intense and localized. In older ovens, the broiling element was the same as the oven heating element (below the cooking chamber) and a special broiler drawer is used to broil food.
I saw some Aussie style bacon somewhere once but I was going to be out for the rest of the day so didn't buy any & now I can't remember where I saw it!
As a result, i have started grilling pancetta instead - its awesome!
I agree their bacon, especially when purchased as a slab is excellent. If you are in New York, try slab bacon at Zabar's and Citarella.
All in all it takes about 5 to 10 minutes off of the conventional time it takes just cooking in the pan, which can be important when you are preparing complimentary dishes that take less time to cook.
I'll stick to buying packaged bacon from Safeway or Kroger's, thanks.
Seriously, are you all like 80 years old and grew up on farms milking your cows and eating unprocessed chicken eggs or what? Between this and homemade mayo with raw eggs, you all must have a death wish.
The cast iron idea intrigues me. I will have to try that method some time.
I buy bulk whole bacon when it's cheaper here (Australia) and trim it, separating the eyes, which don't need much cooking, from the rest. The eyes I use immediately for recipes I don't want fatty bits in, or fry it lightly, then freeze, because cooked bacon freezes well, where raw bacon doesn't. The streaky bits I oven cook spread on trays because you can do a lot at a time and it doesn't need much attention. I then freeze that in ziplock bags and when I want a quick bacon sandwich or something a couple of rashers microwave very efficiently in 10 - 20 seconds and go extra crisp.
Gross. Why would I want bacon made on some hick's nasty ass farm? So I can catch some sort of disease? And why would I want to eat anything from a hogs' "jowl" or whatever?
I'll stick to buying packaged bacon from Safeway or Kroger's, thanks.
Seriously, are you all like 80 years old and grew up on farms milking your cows and eating unprocessed chicken eggs or what? Between this and homemade mayo with raw eggs, you all must have a death wish.[/i:7635a049c6]
Where do you think the Safeway bacon comes from? Do you think that those hogs live in apartments? Or maybe food tastes better to you, after it has plenty of additives added, and is processed in high speed factories?
No, that "hick" who probably sold most of his hogs to Safeway, he doesn't know anything about making pork products, and he doesn't add any chemicals to the meat. How could it be good?
You have probably already eaten hog jowl, if you have ever eaten at Cracker barrel, or had a canned ham.
RE: Mayonaise with raw eggs. That is how mayonaise is made, in the wonderful delicious factories, or at home. The raw eggs are the reason that anything made with mayonaise cannot be left out of the refrigerator for more than 1 hour. The raw eggs start to go bad, resulting in food poisoning. But then again, you know everything, so why not make some potato salad, RIGHT NOW, and leave it on your porch overnight. Tomorrow for lunch, ENJOY!
You are a jerk
My uncle had a hog ranch in TX. THere are many types of hogs and they all have differing weights for the "best" fat or lean uses. The geographic area actually makes a difference (or used to) as far as how fat or lean meat was to be. Remember that the hogs are raised for ALL thier meat, not just the pork belly. One good weight for the rest of the meat might make a fatty belly, as would hogs that were "penned" verses what we would call "free range" today.
His hogs always had large pens and could move at will. They were raised on grain and sold at 190 to 200 pounds average. If my uncle delivered at 185 pounds he would not be paid enough to stay in business, teh same at 202 pounds. Believe me, they were all very close in size (average) by sex. It was amazing because My uncle would one day say "its time to sell them" ....he would never have weighed them he just knew by looking.
The point is that the companies that make the bacon heavily brine them, use sugars and other unnecessary items in curing, add liquid smoke, add additional salt and then at packaging add and inject water. They do NOT care about a good product. They are there to make money. They certainly do not care about the "lean" of the product. Some idiot will buy it and eat it because they aer programmed to like it.
I have eaten bacon that of course was brined before smoking, but never had anything added or changed after smoking, no water, nothing. There is NO comparison of REAL bacon to the stuff being sold in the US as palletable. There is NO meat on this stuff, if there is it is fatty streaked meat as well (penned hogs) from flacid muscles.
WE need a minor revolution in bacon to have good product.
The only product I was able to find that was any good at all was sold in stores in the San Jose area as cut ends and peaces of bacon (the drops and cuttings from processing). It was meaty, thick and even huge chunks. It was cheap. It was better than any I have found as regular store items.
If you are int eh SF bay area (unfortunately I am now in FL) try Cosentinos Markets, they sometimes have fairly good bacon in the meat department. I watch for exceptionally lean product even there before buying, I even make them sort some for me if I can.
As to the cooking of the bacon.....after having read all the reports and methods, it seems that there is a thread of evidence that would make one believe that cooking for over 15 to 20 minutes under a heat that allows this without burning delivers the best results. I believe that is correct as I usually slow cook on stove top or oven for about 20 to 30 minutes myself