Re: How to make poor quality bacon

On 5/14/2025 12:30 PM, Ed P wrote:

For years, we made bacon in a frying pan.  Always good, crispy and even had fat to cook other things in.
 Recent years, found that the oven is great too.  Parchment paper on a pan that holds eight slices works very well.  Crispy and tasty.
 Decided to try a quick shortcut I've read about often.  Microwave.
 Put two slices on a paper towel, folded it over to avoid splatter, put the plate in the MW for three minutes.  It was cooked, the ends were crispy but the middle a bit less so.  Flavor?  Seems most of that was missing.  The crispness was not the same either, texture off.
 Won't ever try that shortcut again.

When I bought my first microwave (circa 1980), I also bought a slanted microwave-safe drip pan made specifically for cooking bacon.  It was slanted so the bacon grease would collect at one end of the pan.  You did have to turn the bacon at least once during cooking, and yes, cover it with a paper towel to prevent splatters, but IIRC it came out nice and crisp all the way through.  That microwave and the bacon pan are long gone.
I'll stick with the baked bacon method.  I do mine on a slotted broiler pan that allows the grease to drain off underneath.  I don't cook with bacon fat but if I did I could pour the collected grease into a jar from the pan below.  As it is, I line it with foil, crumple it up and toss it.  Very minimal cleanup required.
Jill