A Simple Trick for the Crispiest Bacon

[Michie]

From Joe’s Bakery in Austin, this technique is positively genius.

From breakfast tacos to waffle platters to overstuffed BLTs, a crispy slice of bacon is a peak eating experience. But I'm here to tell you: It could be even crispier.

While I was hunting for the simplest possible recipes for my new cookbook, Simply Genius, I stumbled on a trick used by the third-generation stewards of Joe’s Bakery, established in 1962 in Austin. It’s so effective that their customers assume their bacon has been fried, state fair style.

“People, it’s not deep-fried,” co-owner Regina Estrada said, as she described her family’s technique for writer Paula Forbes’s The Austin Cookbook, where I first saw it. So what is it that makes Joe’s bacon so incomparably crisp?

A time-tested trick:

This trick dates back to Regina’s grandfather, Joe Avila: With a flour coating and an overnight chill, bacon both kept its shape better and stayed crispier in their bean-and-egg tacos. And the shape is important, Regina emailed me: “Always strips of bacon . Never crumbled.” (Any crumbly bits and bacon grease go into their beans.)

At the bakery these days, the kitchen team dredges 15-pound cases of bacon, slice by slice, in all-purpose flour; refrigerates them on a sheet pan overnight; then cooks them on the griddle at around 4 a.m. to use throughout the day. But for beginners and busy cooks at home, the easiest way to evenly cook a batch of bacon is in the oven, right on the same sheet pan.

Continued below.

A Simple Trick for the Crispiest Bacon

From Joe’s Bakery in Austin, Texas, this technique is positively genius.

www.bonappetit.com

 

[Shane R]

The crispiest bacon comes from a microwave because all of the moisture is evacuated. My mother loved cooking bacon in the microwave on a special tray she got in the early 90s with a trough at the end kind of like the grease catch that comes with a George Foreman grill (which she is also fond of). I hate microwaved bacon.