Ingredient

Bacon

Bacon cooked well is crisp and deeply savoury; bacon cooked badly is grey, leaking white liquid, and simultaneously burnt and flabby. The difference is mostly the cure, and partly one counter-intuitive instruction: start it in a cold pan.

Why cold pan, low heat

Bacon is mostly fat and water held in a cured muscle. Dropped into a hot pan, the outside seizes and browns before the fat has had a chance to render, so you end up with burnt edges and unrendered fat in the middle.

Started in a cold pan over a medium-low heat, the fat melts out gradually and the bacon effectively fries in its own fat. It browns evenly, the fat renders properly, and it crisps rather than scorching.

It takes a few minutes longer and it is the single biggest improvement most people can make. The rendered fat is also worth keeping — it is one of the best cooking fats there is.

The types

Streaky

From the belly. Layers of fat and meat, crisps well, and the best for cooking with because it renders so much fat.

Back

From the loin, with a lean eye and a fat edge. Meatier, less crisp, the standard for a bacon sandwich.

Middle

Both, in one rasher.

Lardons and pancetta

Cubed cured belly. For soffritto, ragù and carbonara.

Smoked

Cured then smoked. Stronger, and it dominates a dish — useful or not depending on what you are making.

Unsmoked (green)

Milder and more versatile for cooking.

The white liquid

The milky liquid that seeps out of some bacon and boils in the pan is water and dissolved protein from a wet cure. Wet-cured bacon is injected with brine, which adds weight, and that water comes back out in the pan.

It is not harmful, but it means the bacon boils rather than fries until the water has gone, which is why wet-cured bacon is so hard to crisp and why it shrinks so dramatically.

Dry-cured bacon — salted rather than injected — releases very little. It costs more per pack and rather less per rasher once you account for what the wet-cured one loses. If bacon matters to you, this is where to spend.

Cooking and using it

• In a pan — cold pan, medium-low heat, turned once or twice, until as crisp as you like.
• In the oven — laid on a rack over a tray at 200°C for fifteen minutes. The best method for a large quantity and it needs no attention.
• Keep the fat. Strain it into a jar and use it for roast potatoes, frying eggs, or the base of a stew.
• As a flavour base — lardons rendered first, then onions cooked in the fat. The start of a great many good dishes.
• Do not crowd the pan. Bacon releases water and crowded bacon steams.
• Drain on a rack, not paper, if you want it to stay crisp.

Bacon fat, and what to do with it

The rendered fat is worth more than most of what a kitchen throws away, and it costs nothing.

• Pour it off and keep it in a jar in the fridge. It sets to a firm pale fat and keeps for weeks.
• Roast potatoes in it, which is the single best use and gives a flavour dripping does not.
• Fry eggs and bread in it, which is what it was traditionally for.
• Start a soup or a stew with it in place of oil — lentil, pea, bean and cabbage soups all improve.
• Make a warm dressing by adding vinegar to the hot fat in the pan, for a spinach or chicory salad.
• Use it in cornbread, savoury scones or a pastry for a savoury pie.
• Strain it through a fine sieve or muslin first, or the sediment will burn next time.
• Do not pour it down the sink, which is where most of it goes and where it does real damage.

Common questions