Perfect Bacon

I don’t know too many lifters that don’t like bacon – it is glorious.  But cooking it can be a pain the ass.  It is messy, the grease is splattering everywhere, and it is easy to overcook, plus many pans can only handle so many pieces of bacon at once.

Enter the oven.  We cook so many other things in there, why not use the oven to cook the bacon?  In my opinion it tastes much better this way, it is more consistent, it requires much less attention, and clean-up easier.  It is really super simple.  Here is the process:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. You will use the middle rack.
• Get a cooking pan with reasonable edges to catch the grease that will build up. It is important that the pan will stay flat while it cooks (cheap/thin ones will warp when the heat up and this will cause the fat to all drain in place which doesn’t work well for our purposes).  But aluminum foil down to make the clean-up easier (might double layer it in opposing directions since one sheet usually can’t cover the whole thing).
• Lay the un-cooked bacon the pan, they can be next to each other but they should not be laying on top of one another – this will significantly extend cooking times.

Don’t let pieces overlap

• Place the bacon in the oven at 400 and cook it. How long you cook it varies on how crispy you like and it how thick the bacon is.  For thinner bacon cook it for 10-15 minutes.  For thicker bacon cook it for 20-25 minutes.  Feel free to peek in on it near the end to see how it looks, but remember it continues cooking a bit and it always looks a tiny bit underdone in the pan.  Once you dry it off and remove the fat it stiffens up a bit.
• Flipping the bacon is unnecessary however you can do it if you want to.
• The bacon should be cooking in its own grease, this is important. If there is no grease the bacon will burn pretty easily and get black and crispy – some people like it this way.

Let the Bacon grease do it’s work

• Take the bacon out once it is done. I lay it on paper towels to let it dry out for a minute or two, it if it is pretty greasy you can dab it dry with the paper towels as well.

Lay out on paper towel once done

After about 20 minutes, voila! – you are done.  Perfectly cooked bacon that you can replicate every time with minimal effort.  It might take a little longer than bacon in the frying pan but it requires no attention so you can cook other stuff, clean, read, watch TV, dream about PR’s – whatever.  Add some eggs, throw it on a sandwich or burger, wrap it around scallops, lay it on your partners stomach – do as your heart desires.

I enjoy cooking and I enjoy eating good, hearty food(click for more recipes).  I am not arguing one can eat unlimited bacon (although a pound of bacon a day did help my collegiate lifting partner go from 198 to 302 lbs!) but as part of an overall diet it can be a nice addition from time to time.

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