Go to the Article: Tips & Tricks: The World’s Best Bacon Cooks Allllll Night Long
I line the sheet pan with an extra large piece of foil; turning up the edges of the foil around the pan so it is like a splatter guard. I’ve tried roasting bacon on a rack but prefer how it turns out just “frying” in it’s own fat sitting directly on the pan.
I just commented on the fact that nothing printed when I tried to print Grant's Pizza flour toasting technique. Here again, same thing. Click on the print button and you get...Zip. So I copied the text and pasted it into a Word document. That works, but why do you bother with a print button if nothings going to print?
Great recipe. However, Barry White does not sing that song, it is actually indeed the great Lionel Richie.
NO. Don't worry about the labels. Just put the whole package into a Ziploc bag. No problem!
How about a video? There is much confusion here. It seems a bit ridiculous, so maybe seeing is believing?
What a great idea
I use a silicone 🐷 to keep the grease. It has a screen to capture any bits.
Sandwich it between two trays, and you won't have the splatter problem!
I do the same thing only I put the bacon on a sheet of parchment paper then put the pan in a cold oven, turn the heat to 400F and cook for 25-30 minutes. Comes out perfect every time.
I find cooking bacon in the oven is messy.
The bacon will splatter all over the walls. It’s not real noticeable after you do it one time but after several times you wish you never did it.
Air fryer is now my fav. Faster, less smell and still just as good as the oven. Only challenge with thick cut is there is a lot of fat to ensure you don’t dump….
Another Southern tip (and don't tell my wife I told y'all this): get a large glass jar (a leftover spaghetti sauce jar will do) and save your bacon grease in it every time you cook. Keep the jar in a refrigerator and let the amount build up. When you're ready to make fried chicken...you guessed it, use the bacon grease to fry your chicken in. Use maybe 2/3 oil (or Crisco if you're old school) and the rest bacon grease. It's a great flavor. Also, when you start preparing to cook the bacon take your jar out of the refrigerator and let it get to room temperature while you're cooking the bacon, so when you pour the hot grease in the jar it won't crack from being too cold.
I do the same thing and I don't flip them, but I will rotate the tray halfway through the cooking.
Also, I forgot to mention that you don't need to flip the bacon. Not at all. Just cook until its the color/crispiness that you want, then pull it out and blot with paper towels to remove excess fat, and enjoy the decadence!
Look, first of all, I love Chef Steps and almost everything that they do. They are AWESOME!!! However, I'd like to state that the easiest and best method for making bacon is NOT this. Instead, just turn on your oven to 350 degrees F, or 175C. While its warming up, take a cookie sheet and place some aluminum foil (aluminium for my British friends) on the bottom, but bend up all four edges to make a little tray within the tray (this will save you from having to do much cleanup on the pan. Separate the slices and put side by side on the bottom of the foil and cook in the oven until its absolutely perfect. To some that means cook it a little more. To others, a little less. No matter what, its WAY easier than this method, it renders a lot of the fat, makes the bacon perfectly crispy/chewy, and cleanup is a snap. The one downside is that it takes slightly longer to cook than on the stove top, but not much. Maybe an extra 5 or 10 minutes, depending on how crispy you like your bacon.
I left them in original packaging and then put in refrigerator until the next day. all the fat congealed and i couldn't separate the slices. next time I will separate before refrigerating.
can you turn down the background music?
LIONEL RITCHIE, not Barry White --- sheesh!!
Okay, I finally got it, but, it took forever! I cut my bacon in half before I separated the thick-cut bacon strips. I put them side by side in a vacuum bag and sealed. I followed the instructions and cooked them for 26 hours. Taking them out, they looked raw. I left them in my refrigerator and freezer, until I wanted them. Then I took the strips out, and put them on a baking sheet to broil them. Once they looked good and crisp on one side, I used tongs and flipped them. They DIDN'T FALL APART! I left them under the broiler until the other side crisped, too. They were perfect! Crispy, yet tender. Now I always Sous vide the bacon and have it in the freezer ready to crisp up. It takes a LONG time to do, but the bacon comes out great. It was really good for making cheese and bacon hors d’oeuvres. Since the bacon was cooked, but not crisp, I wound it around the bread and cheese easily, then baked.
See my comment above! I had the same mess, and I had separated them BEFORE cooking. I had read your review and was TRYING to avoid your pitfalls. No luck, just a mess of crumbs. It MAY work with Canadian bacon, which is more like ham.
I cooked the bacon strips for 26 hours. After reading from another user that the slices fell apart when they went to crisp them. I decided I would separate my strips before putting them in the plastic bag. Each bag had 3 to 4 half pieces in it. After 26 hours, I put them in the skillet. They were not crisping up at all. When I went to turn them, the pieces fell apart. Using a spatula, I tried to flip them as one piece and they still fell apart. I ended up with bacon bits not bacon slices. I would not recommend Sous Vide for bacon. It tasted stronger than after frying, too, which was okay, but I prefer crispy bacon strips! Unfortunately, I put 2 pounds of thick cut bacon in my Joule. What a waste! I might try baking them to see if they will stay in one piece!
It would be helpful to change it so people cook it correctly without having to read these comments. I know that I depend on your recipes. I'm sure many of us do.
this is an old activity that points to the guide in the joule app.. sorry for the confusion. it can be done in 8 hours but our recommendation is for 24. you can also go for 48hr for a rich and braisey texture.
What does "cook it overnight" mean in terms of hours? That's too vague for me. I've read 24 hours elsewhere. I want it crispy. I also read that thick is best. Is it?
I would recommend separating the bacon while it is still warm, or room temp. that will help with it sticking together.
Ditto, my man. What a greasy, sticky mess. Parts of it stuck together and after cajoling the parts to separate and doing them in pieces in the pan, it was good, but not good enough to justify the incredible effort.
I tried it and had a terrible time separating the bacon strips after the sous vide. They tore to pieces.
David - Dallas
I haven't tried it with bacon (but will!). I did sous vide a Safeway beef filet that was pre-seasoned and vacuum packed, and it was great. Until somebody suggested that it wasn't a great idea if I didn't know the plastic used in the packaging. Is there any rule about this?
To each his own, I guess. To my taste, bacon must be crispy throughout. I consider “chewy” bacon to be undercooked, and I’d leave it on the plate!
Made this with homemade 1/4” thick sliced bacon and it was the bomb! It really brought out the more subtle flavors in the bacon (coriander, juniper, thyme...).
I had the same opinion, so I vacuum sealed the package. Until I know better, I feel it's worth 10 cents to keep the Joule motor from harmful paper
Love this idea. I like the taste of bacon, but HATE it over-crisp (I actually like it sorta chewy.) Sous vide will allow me to touch it up just enough to suit my desire.
John, would you share your Southern cornbread recipe
Thanks,
Jim
Didn't CS have a homemade bacon recipe at some point?
Has anyone tried this with turkey bacon? Curious what the time/temp would be.
What to do with bacon grease? Make Southern cornbread! The flavor is fantastic! Buttermilk, egg, only yellow cornmeal -- no flour and NO sugar! Cast- iron skillet, cook in hot oven! Yum!
8hrs
I can try this wtih any bacon packaging? cause the bacon my brother and I get is camp bacon idk thats what it says on the packaging If so I wouldnt mind trying this method
How did it go?
I'm doing it today. I'll let you know how it turns out.
My local farmers market double smokes their bacon and they slice to order. I get them to cut double thick for this recipe. 8 slices ends up at about 1.25 lbs. 24 hrs with a pan finish has been money every time.
I just got my Joule, I'm trying this tonight. One thing I worry about when using the store packaging is that the label might come apart and clog up the Joule. Has anyone had trouble with this? Do you remove your label first?
I love the Joule but I don’t think this works that well with bacon. I used Hemplers bacon cooked it for 16 hrs and while the texture was good but the flavor was not as good as frying in a pan. I think the frying in the bacon fat actually enhances the flavor. Still love the Joule but more for other things
So, have you tried it?
Tried this last night, but finished the bacon on the grill and it worked great! I've been trying to find a good method for cooking bacon on the grill, previously I had lightly microwaved the bacon and then grilled it, but that didn't produce consistently good results.
With Joule I popped the bacon in and let it cook for 8 hours. I wiped the slices with a paper towel to remove as much grease as possible and put them directly over the coals, once flare-ups started I moved the bacon to the cooler part of the grill waited a couple of minutes and flipped it. All told it was on the grill maybe four minutes tops. The bacon was amazing, the smokiness had intensified a bit and the texture was perfect. Next time I'm going to try cooking it with some hickory chips on the fire and the top of the grill closed to really amp up the smoke.
So, what's the minimum cooking time needed for this to work?
Use the thickest bacon you can.
The usual formula for frozen food is to add half the time to it. So If you are told to sous vide for an hour, cook for 90 minutes. There’s a post about that on this site.
Since I smoke my own bacon, I don't know if this would improve the texture or taste, but I am going to try it anyway.
I smoke my bacon to an internal of 160 anyway, so will just have to see if there is a difference. Anova for me.
You can usually sous vide directly from frozen.
You can usually sous vide meat from frozen.
Can we cook frozen bacon this way or do we defrost then cook?
Has anybody tried this with a slab (hunk of uncut) bacon? I would like to try it but do not want to ruin a hunk of bacon.
Yum Yum!! Tried this today. Bacon came out wonderful. Only curiosity I have is the type of bacon you should use. Although, CS stated it can be sous _vi_de for a long period of time, after 8 hours you need to check on it. My bacon began to peel a bit after 10 hours. I only see this as an issue if presentation is what you are looking for. I will try some thick bacon cuts next go around.
@ChefSteps: Maybe a little help to clarify if it team thick or team thin for the bacon.
PS. I did like the fact I can add eggs while this is going on in the final hour
Bloody Disaster!
Having it on good authority that this technique turns out a tasty product, I thought I'd give it a try. So last night, I heated a container of water and dropped in a package of bacon for the morning. As I did, I gave fleeting thought to repackaging the bacon in a proper sous vide bag, but took at face value Grant's assurance that the factory package was good enough.
I awoke this morning to find a thick, frothing, greasy, slimy stew bubbling away in the container. At some point during the night, the packaging had burst, dumping the bacon into the hot, churning water. How did it taste? Just like you would expect smoked, salted meat to taste after it has soaked overnight in a pot of hot swirling water. It was awful! Just a mass of warm, flubbery fat with neither flavor nor seasoning.
So I would suggest that anyone attempting this make sure they use a more robust containment field than the one that came from the factory. Either a sous vide bag, or at least a freezer baggie.
Will I try this again? Of course I will. As I said, I have it on good authority that ,when things work as they should, it turns out a superior bacon. But the episode, while instructional, was a sad end to a whole package of bacon.
UPDATE:
Thanks to Brian whose earlier posting provided the best post-crash analysis.
"Quick note, Oscar Mayer bacon packages are mostly all designed to peel open by hand. This oversight caused the package to open unattended, and dumped all of the bacon grease into the water bath overnight. Suggest a revision to the video as many varieties of US packaging will have this issue."
I only wish I had read this before I dropped the package in the water.
This Bacon is the truth!!!!!!!!!!!!
