Cooking Bacon

Hi all;
Having just taken my piggies off to the butcher, I am dreaming of all the tasty products that will come home next week!
Topping the list is BACON!  An all-time favorite!
A few months back I was told of a different method of cooking bacon.
Different method? Throw it in your cast iron skillet, flip it, get a few grease burns, and enjoy!
It turns out there is an alternative I had never even considered.
Place your bacon on a cookie sheet in the oven @ 350F for 20 minutes!  The Oven?  Who would have thought?
Your bacon comes out completely flat, fully cooked, and no grease was splattered!

Turns out that anyone in the food service industry has known about this for years...
When you cook pounds of bacon at a time, using a skillet just won't do the job quickly or painlessly.
I guess cooking Pizzas in an Italian restaurant (at 16) did not teach me all I needed to know about bacon!    Shocking right?

This was brought to my mind this morning by fellow staff member Gerry Parent.
He is a practicing vegetarian so cooking bacon is not on his to-do list.
However, he is a huge fan of my home-smoked cheese.
This morning he asked if I "smoke" my bacon when cooking it?
Well gosh... you cook bacon in a frying pan, Right? Well, I used to except now I know a different way.
So, when my new stash of bacon arrives next week.
I'm thinking some will need to be cooked and extra hickory smoked in my Walker black and white oven!

Hmmm looking forward to it already!   Thanks, Gerry!

I get my smoked bacon at the store.

We buy 10 lbs. at a time.

Not long ago I put the box it comes in in the laundry room.

Later I thought that the bedroom smelled like smoke.  Upon investigation, it turned out to be that empty bacon box.

I like to cook my bacon on the George Foreman Grill.  Actually, that is about all I use it for.

Hi Anne;
My bacon is of course fully smoked already when I get it.
This next time I will toss hickory chunks into the already warmed-up black oven while my presmoked bacon is baking adding another layer of smoky goodness.

After I have smoked cheese pieces, they go in the fridge to cool before vacuum packing them.
Oh My, the smells that waft out when you open the door are heavenly!
Even after the cheese has moved on the smell lingers for a few days!

That is a BRILLIANT use of a black oven!  Hot smoke awesomeness

We always used the broiler pan or a wire rack in a cookie sheet to keep the bacon out of the fat so it came out with just the right amount of far left on it and your bacon grease was pretty clean and ready to save for other uses.

John (retired chef) and I (former bakery baker) have been oven cooking our bacon for as long as I can remember, but about 7yrs ago (while still living in the Chicago burbs, in a loft apartment), he started buying raw pork belly, and doing his own curing and smoking. There is truly something magical about home-cured, home-smoked bacon, that just can't be matched. Just playing around with the wood types is some of the most fun, yummy science I can think of!