Bacon is one of those foods that really does tickle the taste buds, the rich meat can accompany almost anything from Full English breakfasts, to pasta dishes and much more. But how do you cook bacon to perfection? We are about to show you just how this popular ingredient can be cooked, whether it’s part of a hangover cure or a delicious meal at a dinner party. Sit back, relax and let us take you through the steps to cooking…
The classic way of cooking bacon is to use a frying pan or griddle; these are usually the quickest and most effective ways of getting the meat cooked. If you decide to use this method to cook then you can cook 3-4 rashers in a decent sized frying pan but make sure that each rasher is lying flat on the pan (no overlapping).
If you are using a griddle then we suggest a heavy cast iron griddle is the best choice but any griddle will suffice.
One big tip is that you don’t need oil, the grease from the bacon itself will provide enough fat to cook each rasher in. When the bacon begins to curl up you can then turn the bacon onto the other side in order to get both sides cooked properly. Usually it takes about 8-15 minutes to completely cook bacon using a griddle pan or frying pan.
Top tip: Keep the heat on a low-medium or the bacon may stick to the pan and be hard to remove.
The second popular way to cook the salty delight that is bacon, is to oven cook it. It has to be said that this method is much cleaner than frying the bacon as you won’t have that splatter across your counter tops.
Fire up your oven to around 400F and then place the bacon on a middle shelf where the heat is at its highest temperature. The bacon rashers will take less time that frying and you can expect a complete cook in around 10 minutes using this method.
Top tip: To keep things clean make sure that you use aluminium foil to line your backing tray or grill, this will help collect the fat that drips from the bacon and saves you from having to clean the oven tray after use.
This may seem like a strange way to cook bacon, but never neglect your microwave as a form of cooking, it may seem like a bit of a cheat but it really can work wonders for you. Take the bacon rashers and pop them onto a plate, then cover the plate with some paper towels (this is to help control the grease that will squirt out from the bacon when it’s cooking).
By using the microwave as a form of cooking you can literally get your bacon from raw to cooked within about a minute per slice. So if you have 4 rashers placed onto a plate you will need to set the microwave to a high cooking level, and then cook them for around 4 minutes.
Of course, if you want extra crispy bacon then you should add another minute onto the clock which will give you that crunchy texture.
The final method that we wanted to look at was how to cook bacon under a grill, this method will cook the bacon in about 10 minutes if you flip the rashers over after 5 minutes of cooking. You don’t want to cook on a high heat however, which is something that many people do. You want a medium-high heat which will give you a great tasting result.
Be careful of the grease splatter as you won’t be able to control this and more often than not you are going to be left with a clean-up job at the end of cooking in order to de-grease the grill filaments.
Once cooked, go ahead and enjoy as part of a breakfast, lunch or tea time dish!