Quick Tip: No Mess Bacon

My mom said I had to post this as a quick tip because she tried it just last week even though I have been telling her to do it for years. Moms. They never listen.

Bacon isn't exactly a frugal option ever. Not even on sale. It's hardly nutritious, and at its cheapest it's ridiculously expensive per cooked ounce. But it's so yummy, and I love it so.

Bacon's also really not a good option for a household of two. You can't buy it in packages smaller than one pound, and who can eat half a pound of bacon in one meal? Not me! Well, okay, I could but I shouldn't.

Not to mention, bacon is such a pain to fry. The grease splatters everywhere. If your stove is on its last legs, as mine is, the heat is uneven. You can really only fit one or two pieces directly over the heat or else half your bacon burns and half is soft and floppy. And soft, floppy bacon is . . . well, it's not even worth thinking about.

I haven't solved the artery-clogging problem, but I have solved the cooking problem and made inroads into the not-so-frugal problem.

I came up with my bacon cooking method when I was reflecting back on my Cal Poly years - specifically on the 5-month period that I spent cooking bacon for the entire campus dining organization. Every morning I would arrive on campus at 5:30 a.m. and begin peeling slices of bacon off industrial-sized slabs to place them on industrial-sized cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Then I'd place 4 trays on a rotating rack in a mega-industrial-sized oven. It was like El Pollo Loco's rotating chicken rack, only with flat racks for placing trays on and a tiny one rack's height opening. The trays would circle around and be fully cooked by the time they got back to the opening.

Ten times in a row (the # of racks in the oven), I had to set up raw bacon on 4 trays and throw them in the oven before the rack disappeared from view.

Once rack #1 returned, I would have to grab the now scalding hot metal trays full of scalding hot bacon grease and set them to cool in a rolling cart that could hold 24 trays of cooked bacon. Once the first rack returned, the task became grab 4 cooked trays & place them in the cooling rack AND place 4 raw trays back on the cooking rack before the rack disappeared from view.

Once the second rotation was finished, the task became grab 4 cooked trays & place them in the cooling rack AND place 4 raw trays back on the cooking rack AND move the cooling trays out of the way and replace them with empty cooling trays before the rack disappeared from view.

I did this for three and a quarter hours a day, every weekday, for 5 months. For the most part, I had a rhythm down. As long as there were no interruptions, it was pretty smooth if slightly hectic. If I got distracted, though, sometimes a cooked tray would escape for a second go-round. The second time around, it would be burned to a tiny strip of charcoal. If you got a BLT with a burned piece of bacon from The Sandwich Plant at Cal Poly some time between January 1993 and June 1993, I'm sorry. It's not easy to cook more than 100 pounds of bacon in three hours.

We won't even go into how not easy it is to clean up 3 pounds of melted bacon fat from a tile floor when you are rolling your cart and it hits a bump and topples over, spilling all the bacon fat and 24 trays of cooked bacon onto the ground.

If you got a BLT with a fuzzy piece of bacon from The Sandwich Plant at Cal Poly some time between January 1993 and June 1993. . . that's not my fault. I always threw those pieces away.

Anyway, when I reflected on that experience, I realized there was no reason to actually fry bacon and probably if I used quality bacon it would still be tasty after being refrigerated or frozen. The cold bacon at Cal Poly tasted the same as the hot bacon.

So I decided to try baking my own bacon at home. This was in the days before ubiquitous internet access, and I couldn't just look up any old "how to cook bacon" website and find out if this would work or not!

But it did work! And ever since, that's how I've gotten my bacon fix. I cook a couple of pounds, eat a slice or two (or three), and freeze the rest. Then when we want bacon, we can take out a slice or two (or three) and warm it up in the microwave or toaster oven. That means cook once, eat 5, 6, or 7 times!

That solves the hassle problem. The frugal problem is slightly remedied by the fact that you can buy your bacon in mega bulk when you find a good deal. Bacon really is one of those foods where quality is very obvious. Cheap bacon is overly fatty and shrivels; good quality bacon has a decent amount of meat and lays flat. But since it's also one of those foods you shouldn't be having very often anyway, $2.50/lb for mass produced bacon vs $7/lb for good quality local farmer bacon isn't too big a hit on your budget.

Anyway, here's how you can avoid fried bacon splatters and have a grease-free kitchen, too. If you have a Pampered Chef stoneware baking sheet, all you have to do is place your bacon in strips so that it covers the pan and stick it in the oven at 350 until the bacon would stand up on its own but isn't crispy.

Take the pan out and allow the bacon to cool on the pan (it'll still be cooking, which is how it gets to the crispy state). Store bacon flat or in crumbles. I actually break it in half and store in a small tupperware container because I don't care if my bacon is half-sized or not.

Wait until the fat congeals, scrape it off thoroughly, and rub the pan dry with a paper towel. The fat just adds to the stoneware seasoning.

Voila! Bacon with no mess!

If you don't have a Pampered Chef stoneware baking sheet (and you really should, seriously), you can use any old baking sheet, but I recommend placing the bacon on wire racks on the sheet. Use the same method, but bake a tiny bit longer before removing from the oven. Clean as you would any greasy pan.

Just for fun: Bacon Flow Chart