Twisted Bacon Recipe - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to perfect bacon? ›

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.

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.

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.

Why Does Cooking Bacon in Water Work? 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.

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.

Bake the bacon in a 400°F oven until well-browned and crisp, this should take between 15 and 18 minutes depending on the thickness of your bacon. To follow Martha's method to a T, you'll need to rotate the sheet pan halfway through.

Cooking bacon in the oven can help you achieve evenly crisp bacon slices to prevent burnt ends and chewy and raw middles.

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.

Side bacon has much more fat on it. Uncooked or undercooked fat is not well-appreciated by Americans. As a result, they tend to cook it longer, to render much of the fat out. This leaves the bacon crispy.

What is the secret to crispy bacon? ›

Put the bacon in a non-stick frying pan in a single layer. Top with another heavy pan or frying pan that fits snugly into the pan on top of the bacon. If it's not very heavy, top with another pan, or anything heatproof and weighty. Fry on a medium-low heat for 10-15 mins until golden and super-crispy.

How to Render Bacon Fat. At risk of stating the obvious, you render bacon fat by first cooking bacon. The trick is to cook the bacon slowly, on medium-low heat. I do this on the stovetop in a cast-iron pan, because cast iron retains heat and helps you cook bacon more evenly.

According to Dawn Perry, Real Simple's food director, cooking bacon in water could keep it tender on the inside while still crisp on the outside. How? The bacon fat would render into the water. Once the water evaporates, the bacon would crisp in its own fat.