Water-Fried Bacon Revisted

Spring Chicken

I just had a wonderful breakfast, which by all modern health standards, is destined to kill me, if not today, surely by the programmed end of my life.

Yes, two fried eggs (one with two yokes), buttered English muffin (toasted), mill-ground speckled grits with salt and butter to flavor, orange marmalade, orange juice, coffee and bacon. Yes, bacon... the stuff that kills you.

And breakfast was wonderful.

But I decided to fry the bacon in water, just like my earlier post a few months back about frying bacon in water. And this time I had my camera handy. Here's some photos of the progression until ready to eat.















As you can see, I started with a lot of bacon. Normally, I would have cooked half and then the other half, but this is 'water-cooking' and I wanted to see if the bacon stuck together. It didn't, all the way to the very end...

The photos were taken 1 to 2 minutes apart with an average of about 1.5 to 1.7 minutes. So I concluded that it actually takes longer this way, but not that much longer considering I would have had to cook the same amount of bacon in two batches the old way.

Notice also that the water remained visible for almost 3/4 way through the cook, gradually being replaced by bacon grease as the water evaporated.

You can't see it but I noticed that there was very little grease splatter outside the frying pan and onto the stove. And, there was hardly any of the sometimes overpowering smell of bacon cooking throughout the house. Thirty minutes later and the house smells bacon grease free.

The same was true of grease laden vapors. There didn't seem to be any because they were not apparent on the microwave glass directly above the burners. Frying the regular way would have required a cleaner-soaked paper towel to clean it off, followed by another wipe to get the cleaner streaks off.

I also noticed that I didn't have to keep moving, turning and flipping the bacon to keep it from over cooking or under cooking in spots. A couple of times and that was about it.

I also paid close attention to flavor loss. There was no flavor loss whatsoever, and the flavor was consistent from end to end and among all pieces of bacon.

Finally, I was curious to see how much bacon grease was left over after frying that much bacon. Not as much as one would expect. In fact, it was very easy to wipe out with a wad of paper towels to discard without it going down the drain and causing plumbing problems later on as we are told is exactly what happens to our own internal plumbing from eating crease-ladened bacon.

So where did that bacon grease go, you ask. Well, it sure wasn't in the bacon that I laid on the paper towel covered plate. There was some soaked up by the paper towel but hardly any on the bacon itself. So I don't know where it went but I'm not discounting 'magic.'

So there, you have my version of frying bacon in water. You can try it yourself or not, but if you don't try it, you'll never enjoy it like I did.

Spring "Chicken Ranch Test Kitchen Cook And Bottle Washer Trainee" Chicken
Spring Texas USA

TexanOfTheNorth

Interesting and, something I'd never heard of.

I've cooked/fried bacon in the over before; usually when doing a full pound or more.

500

This is interesting.  I thought all the ways to enjoy bacon have been explored until now.  I usually bake my bacon in the oven.  It stays flat and cooks evenly (especially now with my new Electrolux oven. 

caliking

mmmm,,, bacon!

Looks good. How much water do you put in for what amount of bacon?

Eggcelsior

Never discount magic. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

RAC

Did you lose my phone number?

Mickey

Very interesting Mr Chicken. But what about those of us who craves the house to smell like bacon?

nolaegghead

I find 2.45 GHz photon bombardment does a good job too, except it interferes with my interwebs.

Eggcelsior

nolaegghead said:

I find 2.45 GHz photon bombardment does a good job too, except it interferes with my interwebs.

That's what you get for beaming your Wifi through the metal plate in your head. I know staring into the microwave is fun, but there are better things in life, like horse heads.

Dawnl

Neat, that's how I do my sausages, would never have thought to do bacon like that.  Thanks!

nolaegghead

Eggcelsior said:

nolaegghead said:

I find 2.45 GHz photon bombardment does a good job too, except it interferes with my interwebs.

That's what you get for beaming your Wifi through the metal plate in your head. I know staring into the microwave is fun, but there are better things in life, like horse heads.

Yeah, I had to disable two door inter-locks to get the metal plate exposed properly to the radiation.

I've read, however, the microwave approach has a tendency to superheat the bacon and promotes sodium nitrite conversion to nitrosamines, which are really, really bad carcinogens.  Adding some ascorbic acid to the food greatly mitigates this reaction.

I like the oven method for bacon. 

Eggcelsior

@nolaegghead,

Me too. Especially when I do a bunch. 20 minutes at 350, while I make whatever else on the stove.

Zmokin

Dawnl said:

Neat, that's how I do my sausages, would never have thought to do bacon like that.  Thanks!

I learned that secret on sausages from my Dad, the sausage is cooked by the time the water boils off so then you only need to brown the outside and serve.  Never worry about having sausage under cooked in the middle now when the outside is perfect.