Cooking bacon to crispy perfection is an age-old kitchen conundrum for all culinary skill levels. McKenna Pulda is a food lover who developed the blog “Simplicity and a Starter." She spreads her pro tips, including how to keep you from making rookie mistakes when frying up that bacon. Per Pulda’s guidance, one error is throwing cold bacon straight from the refrigerator onto a hot pan. Instead, she suggests letting the bacon come to room temperature before putting it in a pan so it cooks evenly for the best texture.
Pulda told us that the fat in bacon retains cold more than the actual meat does, which changes how it cooks. For maximum uniformity, she recommends laying bacon strips flat for up to 15 minutes before cooking. Taking this extra five seconds forward will avoid the risk of blind cooking, leading to a better final result.
Pulda supports this popular choice and recommends cooking bacon in a cast-iron skillet. She highlights the benefits of cast iron, noting its ability to evenly heat pork pieces and deliver "beautiful sears and crispy, salty sides." Her first piece of advice is to avoid overcrowding the pan. According to the manufacturer, overlapping bacon slices can produce pieces that are “floppy, burnt, or both.”
“No one wants a bite of rubbery fat and a burnt bit.”
The other key element to bacon frying is controlling the heat. Pulda advises against cooking bacon at excessively high temperatures, as this can shock the water content and cause the bacon to shrink significantly. She recommends sticking to low-medium to medium heat.
“The name of the game is low and slow. If you cook the bacon at too high of heat, this can shock the water content of the bacon, which will cause the bacon to shrink drastically in size,” Pulda remarks.
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