I’m participating this week in  Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, and one of the prompts from this week was to write about “something unique you love about your significant other.”

Is it really so wrong that the first thing that comes to mind when I read that prompt is my husband’s (almost-famous) bacon making technique? (Oscar Mayer will be calling any moment now to ask him for his ‘secrets,’ no doubt.)

It’s true that I do the majority of the cooking around here, but when it comes to cooking bacon, Noel is definitely the expert, and as such, that task falls solidly under his jurisdiction.

Noel has developed a technique for cooking bacon that is a) pretty much mess-free; and b) doesn’t make the house smell like bacon until the middle of the following week. He’s even trained the kids in his ‘technique,’ and our plan is that one day, they will just take over the process. We have no qualms about child labor around here!

And now, I’m going to share it with you, dear readers, because let’s just be honest here: is there anything that isn’t improved with the addition of a little bacon? Well, because I care about improving all your lives, I’ll share this little technique with you.

**************************************************************

So, Saturdays are usually the one day of the week that we set aside for making a big breakfast: waffles or pancakes, or perhaps a Dutch baby, some scrambled eggs and of course, heavenly bacon. It’s the one day of the week that we usually have the time to have a leisurely breakfast, and it’s also the one meal of the week where no one complains, or requests ‘something else.’

Noel is always home on Saturday mornings, and as such, he usually helps in the breakfast making extravaganza. Over the years, making the bacon has fallen to him, and in an attempt of improve on the process, here is what he’s come up with.

The secret (if you want to call it that) to the technique is cooking the bacon on your grill. All the smell, all the grease and splatters happen outside. It’s a beautiful thing. Bacon smells great while it’s cooking, but I really don’t want to still be smelling it 6 hours later.

  • The process begins with heavy duty aluminum foil. It really needs to be the thick stuff, because you don’t want to accidentally poke a hole in it while cooking. Trust me on this. (Bacon fat dripping onto your grill = bad. Unless you are a 9 year old boy, then it’s very cool, because bacon fat dripping onto your grill = big flames. )
  • Tear off a large sheet of foil — large enough that you can double it and still fit the amount of bacon you are cooking on there.
  • Fold it in half, and then fold up the edges to make a rim, securing the corners well.
  • Lay your bacon strips on the foil, and use a pizza peel to transfer the entire thing to your preheated grill.
  • Cook, turning occasionally, until bacon reaches desired level of doneness — which for us, is extra crispy — then remove to a paper towel-lined plate. It’s truly a small miracle that we are all in agreement about how bacon should be cooked (or that all of us even actually eat bacon, for that matter). None of us wants to see any jiggly pieces of just barely cooked fat. Blech. But to each his own.
  • Make goofy faces for the camera, as that somehow mysteriously enhances the flavor of the bacon and gives it that certain je ne sais quoi.

This method is especially great in the winter, because once the bacon is done, you can just leave the foil on the grill for a bit, and the cold air will cause the leftover bacon fat to solidify. Then, you just remove the foil, crumple it up and throw it away. Nothing to wash, and virtually no clean up.

My husband is a genius. What can I say? Well, you can thank me later.

It’s a little trickier in the summer, as the fat will never quite solidify in the heat. That just means you have to be a little more careful removing the foil, and disposing of the grease – however you choose to do so.

Try this technique once, and I promise, you’ll never go back to pan frying. Your bacon consumption, along with your happiness, will increase. (So perhaps will your waist, but that’s a topic for a different blog.)

More bacon = more better!