Twisted Bacon Recipe - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to cooking bacon? ›

In a cold skillet, arrange bacon in a single layer (don't let it overlap too much). Turn the skillet to medium heat and cook, flipping the pieces often to promote even browning, until they reach your desired doneness (8 to 15 minutes). Remove from oven and drain on paper towels.

1: Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil or parchment paper, and lay out as many bacon strips as will fit snuggly without overlapping. 2: Place in a cold oven. Then heat the oven to 400 degrees F and bake to desired crispness, 25 to 35 minutes. 3: Drain well on a paper-towel-lined platter.

Starting with a Hot Pan

I won't keep you waiting: always start with a cold pan. Whether you like your bacon shatteringly crisp or chewy, the goal is strips that are evenly cooked, without burnt bits of meat or rubbery pockets of fat.

They cook it the best way possible, on a sheet pan in the oven. The bonus is while it takes longer to make this way, you can make more at once, the pieces are more or less flat and they come out crispy. Or they throw it in the deep fryer once it's done.

Bacon should be cooked at 400°F.

Medium-thick bacon slices will need 18 to 20 minutes to reach the perfect level of crispiness. But check the bacon at 10 minutes, and adjust your cooking time to your preferred degree of doneness.

Let your bacon sit at room temperature for fifteen minutes or so before you cook it. It will help the fat render more quickly, so it will be crispy and not burnt.

And it's why you might have some bacon slices that accidentally charcoal a bit too much while other slices are still undercooked. Cooking bacon in the oven cooks all of your bacon slices evenly as the heat surrounds them. They slowly sizzle, don't splatter and end up evenly cooked. It's a beautiful thing.

Probably because you're not overcooking it. Bacon has two stages of doneness: chewy and brittle. Many people, including me, prefer it chewy - but if you keep cooking it for a few more minutes, it will get hard, develop a slightly scorched taste, and break into sharp little pieces when you take a bite of it.

The starch soaks up the grease from the bacon, helping it to stay rigid and maintain its shape. Overall, I would say the flour method is the best way to get the crispiest oven-baked bacon and I'll definitely be using this hack again.

The secret is pre-cooking your bacon

Regardless of the perfect meat-to-fat ratio and peak freshness, the real secret to diner-worthy bacon is the cooking method. According to Epicurious, par-cooking it in the oven is the preferred method of many restaurant owners.

What seasoning makes bacon taste better? ›

Even though it doesn't necessarily come with a mild flavor, bacon is a total blank canvas. With the help of some extra ingredients and spices for your bacon, you can take its original savory, salty, and smoky flavor and enhance it with things like chili powder and coffee, Sriracha, maple syrup, brown sugar, or honey.

The addition of water keeps the initial cooking temperature low and gentle, so the meat retains its moisture and stays tender as the fat renders. Plus, since the water helps render the fat, there will be significantly less splatter as your bacon finishes in the pan.

I cook mine in the oven on an aluminium half-sheet pan, covered with baking paper to stop fat spattering all over the oven. I just lie the pieces flat, put the paper over the top, slam it into a cold oven and set it to 180 °C.

Oven bacon gets just as crispy, if not crispier, and there's very little mess to clean up after. Making a batch of bacon in the oven also means you can do other things while it's cooking.