Surprisingly, I am still doing great with my paleo. I am sick, overworked, overcommitted, don't have time to blog - but eating great and loving it! Big changes. I am continuing with the ideas of simplifying paleo diet: finding quick and easy goto recipes, learning the fast way to cook big meals, taking advantage of leftovers.Today, I want to share the latest discovery, which has taken our breakfast to the next level: perfect bacon! A fellow paleo mommy wrote, "The one downsdie to feeding your baby bacon: Greasy little paws after breakfast!" I decided, she was right and I needed to find a bacon recipe that does not take so much time and effort. And I did! From now on, bacon is easy enough, we can have it on school mornings!
I started with a baked bacon recipe. The idea is brilliant: instead of laboring with a fork over a hot pan of sizzling bacon, put it in the oven, set the timer and walk away. After some experimentation, I came up with several important principles:
- There are two phases to baking bacon: the rendering of the fat and the crisping
- The rendering should take about ten minutes at a temperature of or below 300 F.
- The crisping takes under 5 minutes at 400 F.
- The crisping time is critical and depends on the thickness of the bacon, your particular oven and your preferences with respect to crispiness.
This principles generate a couple methods, each useful for its own circumstances.
Line the baking sheet with foil to avoid Lay the bacon strips on a baking sheet. Put the sheet in the oven. (Multiple sheets simultaneously are ok for a lot of bacon!)
Step 2. The baking.
Set the temperature to 400F. Timer to 15 minutes. Walk away. Come back and peek - wait till it looks as crispy as you like it! Record the total time for future reference. Done.
Modification A. Warm oven.
If you are using an already warm oven, don't despair.
Set the temp to 300 F, timer to 10 minutes. Come back, set temperature to 400F, timer to five minutes. After that watch it till it's done.
Congratulations! You have just created the best bacon that has ever resided on your breakfast table, and you can repeat this success every time. Always be careful when buying a different kind of bacon. Everything depends on the thickness of your slices! And don't forget to come back a little early when you get a new oven or move.
OMG you GODDESS! I got here from the Paleo Rodeo, and I'm SO GLAD. Sorry for all the caps lock, but I just spent an hour cooking bacon in bulk today and it is such a pain - even with a cast iron skillet, it takes constant watching.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to try this out with my next pound of bacon. Thank you! THANK YOU!!!!!
Well, that was unexpected! Bacon cooked this way resembles fine marbled prosciutto instead of burned meat candy. The fat and the meat don't merge together, visually with a blackened surface. Luxurious, even.
ReplyDeleteThis was with nitrate free Applegate brand. I'm no longer convinced that nitrate free is a good buy since the celery powder they contain is added as a source of nitrate.
There was no need to flip them. I crumpled up a sheet of thick tin foil before flattening it out a bit and rolling up the sides to contain any fat. It worked fine. No clean up. The grease on top became a sizzling foam. Much more forgiving than the stove top, which causes ridiculous curling up, which this causes none of!
I have to remove my no longer used full size 3/4" thick pizza stones from my oven since this took 30 instead of 15 minutes even though it's a convection oven.
Thanks, guys for the delightful unabashed commentary. Makes me feel good to have discovered something valuable... Also hungry for bacon!
ReplyDeleteI'm sold. I tire so often of curly, unevenly cooked, splattery shrinking bacon. Putting it in the oven was like winning the bacon lottery. The flavor was better than ever.
ReplyDeleteI always cook bacon this way, I hate having to clean up the grease afterwards. I use pampered chef baking sheets, no need for tin foil I also have been known to throw in the oven a pound of frozen bacon..... after about 15 - 20 minutes I take it out, separate it all with tongs and put it back in the oven. I also cook a few pounds at a time and put it in the freezer after it's cooled in a zip lock bag. I take out what I need and my teens won't eat through it.
ReplyDeleteSame here - have always cooked my bacon in the oven. As an added benefit, however, lay the bacon on a grate on the cookie sheet so that it is not sitting in the grease. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou can come up with your own way to do this if you want. Purchasing ways to lose belly fat for women online permits you to shop whenever this is convenient.
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