The Best Ways To Cook Bacon (And The Worst)

Hi, I'm Frank Proto,

I'm a professional chef and a culinary instructor.

And these are the best and worst ways to cook bacon.

[bacon sizzles]

I'll be going over your typical frying and baking

but also some unconventional techniques as well.

This is bacon 101.

Traditionally bacon is made by curing pork belly

with salt and different types of seasonings.

The Chinese accredit it as being the first people

to cook salted pork belly in 1500 BC.

Since then everyone's created their own version of bacon.

The Americans, the British

the, what was the last one?

[Woman] Canadian.

Canadians?

that's not even bacon.

[buzzer rings] It's ham.

We got thick cut.

We got thin cut.

We got all the types of cuts.

They all have the same thing in common,

they're all fatty and delicious.

It could be soft, it could be crispy.

My perfect piece of bacon is crispy along the edges,

just slightly chewy in the middle.

I don't like that stuff that can shatter.

Even though you might think cooking bacon's a simple task,

even the simplest tasks can benefit from proper technique.

[upbeat music]

Pan frying is a tried and true method that most people use.

Takes less time than turning on the oven,

you don't have to warm the house up.

And it's probably the best method for

five to six slices of bacon.

Whenever I choose to pan fry bacon,

I'm always looking for a thick cut bacon.

I just think that it holds up better.

The slice is a little sturdier.

I find that most thin cut bacon

or regular cut bacon nowadays is a little too flimsy.

I like to use a cast iron pan.

If you don't have a cast iron pan, that's fine.

I've let it heat up on about medium heat

for, you know, three to five minutes.

This might seem counterintuitive,

but I always like to start with a little fat.

I just don't like putting things in a dry pan.

I think it's a bad habit to get it into.

So I always just coat the bottom of my pan

with a little bit of fat.

Anything that's not sitting on the bottom of the pan

tends to be kind of flabby and not get enough color,

and anything that's sitting on the pan

tends to get a little too dark.

By putting the oil in there,

you're kind of bringing the level up of the pan

and getting everything evenly cooked.

One thing I'm really conscious about

is when I pull bacon off of the pack

is I kind of just roll it off, right?

I'm not gonna pull.

And I'm gonna use this piece as an example,

when you pull it off the pack, sometimes that happens.

And your bacon gets stretched out.

And look at that.

It's like, almost like, twice the size of the pan.

So when you do that, just kind roll it off.

Don't give it a yank, don't pull it.

So that you get nice even slices, right?

And then we just go right into the pan.

[bacon sizzles]

I try and lay 'em flat or as flat as possible.

[bacon sizzles]

Right now, the bacon is touching the sides of the pan

but you'll notice right away,

it starts to shrink up and fit inside our pan.

So we got four slices in there.

One thing you want to do now is leave it alone, right?

Most people start fussing with it.

Don't fuss with it, leave it alone.

Let it start to brown.

This is probably gonna take

about 5 to 10 minutes at least.

All right so, I'm gonna give it a turn.

It's not totally even right now

but we can also flip it back if we want.

This is one of the disadvantages

I see about using a pan is that,

first it doesn't fit a lot of bacon.

Second, if it's not directly over the burner,

like this one's directly over the burner,

and we got some really good browning on that.

So I'm just gonna start shuffling them around a little.

You really have to tend to it, right?

You need to pay attention.

I love bacon.

I think that even people that are vegetarians or vegans

this is the one thing that they will talk about

that they might miss.

I think bacon is that gateway drug into meat.

And I think we're getting really close here.

When I drain my bacon,

I like to go directly onto a tray with paper towels.

You can use a rack, I just find this is a better method.

I'm gonna leave most of the bacon fat in the pan

and I will not throw that away.

You should not throw away bacon fat,

or bacon grease is something that

you definitely want to keep.

But you can see, we have some nice crispy spots,

a few soft spots there,

and it just smells absolutely delicious.

This is not my favorite method of cooking bacon.

On a scale of one to five, I would probably give it a two.

Just for the fact that it takes a lot of tending.

It takes a lot of babysitting and I don't wanna be standing

in front of the stove all the time.

I want to get my bacon cooked

and I wanna get it in my face as fast as possible.

And it's only four or five slices at a time, who wants that?

[upbeat music]

The baking sheet method is by far my favorite method.

You can cook bulk amounts of bacon, with less space.

There's no tending to the bacon,

you don't have to sit over there and tend to it.

It also cooks the bacon more evenly,

without splatters everyone in your kitchen.

The results are superior in every way.

For this method, I need a sheet tray or a baking tray

and some parchment paper.

Do not use wax paper.

Wax paper has wax, parchment paper does not have wax on it.

If you use wax paper, it's gonna taste like crayons.

And this is how you do it.

All you're gonna do is take your slices of bacon,

and I lay them side by side, nice and evenly.

If you have more bacon, you can probably put 'em

a little closer together but I only have a few slices here.

The yield on the bacon and is better this way as well.

You don't get as much shrinkage.

An alternate method to using the parchment is to use a rack.

I personally don't like using a rack and I'll tell you why.

'Cause I'm lazy and I don't want to clean this thing.

I like cooking on the parchment

because the bacon basically cooks in its own fat.

I'm gonna drain all the fat off later anyway.

So I'm the not really worried about

there being too much fat.

With the rack, all the fat drips away

and I find that it's just a little bit drier.

Once you have all your bacon lined up on the sheet

you put it in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Once your bacon's out of the oven,

you're gonna want to drain it.

You can get a plate or a tray with some paper towels.

For me this is the perfect texture,

a little crunchy, a little chewy.

Look at that, beautiful.

Bacon is evenly baked, a little crispy, a little chewy.

All right, I'm not gonna wait till the end of the episode.

I'm gonna give this a try.

On the Frank-O Meter,

I give this a five out of five.

Let's move on to chapter three, the microwave.

[upbeat music]

As a chef, I have zero problems with the microwave.

It's a great tool.

Not if you're cooking a steak, right?

If you're cooking a steak in the microwave

it is not a good tool.

If you need to get your bacon done in a matter of minutes

and you only need about two or three slices,

the microwave is the way to go.

This is the method with the least amount of cleanup.

All you really need is a few paper towels

and a microwave safe plate.

All you gotta do is take your bacon

put it on the paper towel and then cover it with

two or three more pieces of paper towel.

Not only does a paper towel soak up the excess fat

but it'll also help with a little steam to cook our bacon.

I don't know who puts a microwave

under the counter like this, but excuse my back.

Now, all we have to do is put this in the microwave on high

for about four to six minutes.

All right, this got super crispy.

This is about five minutes.

如果你想要它little less crispy,

you can just go back a little,

maybe go like three to four minutes,

but it's a really great way to do just a few slices.

If you just want some for a sandwich

and maybe to crumble over a salad, but look at that.

[bacon crunches]

Mm.

Crispy.

Delicious.

Mm.

Fabulous.

On the Frank-O Meter, this gets a four out of five.

This is one way of cooking bacon in the microwave

but there are other ways.

Chapter 3.5, sort of terrifying microwave bacon gadget.

If you take a few seconds to search the internet

you can find gadgets for all sorts of things.

Look for about two seconds

and you'll find the WowBacon cooking gadget.

Wow, bacon. [laughs]

All right, let's load this puppy up, okay.

It's a bacon carousel.

That kinda sounds like fun, right?

A bacon carousel.

Drop it in.

The instruction say four to six minutes for a full carousel.

Let's put it in the microwave.

All right.

Here's our bacon pitcher.

Our Pitcher O' Bacon.

Ooh, the big reveal.

It kind of looks a little flabby.

It is really definitely not crisp

because I think the steaming happened there.

And we got not only bacon fat,

but we got some strange kind of bacon juice.

This is more like, wow, I don't want to eat this bacon.

[rimshot sounds] [laughs]

So, if you like the texture of

burnt plastic wrap you might like this texture.

This is definitely a method I'm not gonna try.

And on the Frank-O-Meter, this gets a zero or negative one.

Can you go lower than zero?

'Cause that's what I'm thinking of it.

Who wants to take a sip?

Anyone?

[Man] How much?

Well you get bragging rights.

I've been warn not to do this

but I'm doing this of my own accord, okay.

I just want to taste it, I'm a chef.

I see something like this, and I'm like, what is it?

What can I do with it?

Let's give it a taste.

Oh wow, it's actually really good.

I would probably cook that down and use it in a vinaigrette.

That is not half bad.

Weird bacon, negative one.

Weird bacon juice, gets a 0.5.

[crowd cheers]

Now that you know all the proper ways to cook bacon

你永远不需要经历

a floppy elastic piece of bacon ever again.

Keep away from the gadgets. [laughs]

No matter which technique you choose to use,

at the end of the day, you still got some bacon.

What's not to love about that?