Bacon
Bacon is cured and smoked pork belly (or occasionally other cuts), prized for its salty, smoky intensity and the way its rendered fat carries flavor into whatever it's cooked alongside.
How to buy
Look for slices with a good ratio of lean meat to white fat running through it, pink-red flesh, and no sliminess or off smell. Choose regular versus thick-cut based on use -- thinner slices crisp faster and work well crumbled, thicker cuts hold up better in sandwiches. Smoked, unsmoked, and nitrate-free options vary mainly in flavor intensity and color, not safety when properly refrigerated.
How to store
Keep sealed in the fridge and use within about a week of opening, or follow the package date if unopened. Bacon can be frozen for up to a month before quality starts to suffer; wrap tightly to prevent freezer burn. Cooked bacon keeps in the fridge for 4-5 days, and rendered bacon fat can be strained and refrigerated for reuse as a cooking fat.
Culinary profile
- Flavor
- Salty, smoky, and deeply savory from curing and smoking, with a sweetness that emerges as the fat renders and caramelizes. It can shift from perfectly crisp to bitterly burnt very quickly because of the sugar often included in the cure.
- Texture
- Crisp and slightly brittle when cooked through, chewy and soft if undercooked. Thick-cut bacon stays meatier while thin-cut crisps more uniformly.
- Aroma
- One of the most recognizable cooking smells, driven by smoke compounds from curing combined with rendering pork fat.
How to prepare
- Pan-fried — Cooked slowly in a skillet so the fat renders out as the bacon crisps.
- Oven-baked — Laid flat on a sheet pan for even, hands-off crisping.
- Candied — Coated in brown sugar or maple syrup before baking for a sweet-salty crunch.
- Diced into lardons — Cut small and rendered as a flavorful base for salads, soups, and braises.
- Rendered for fat — Cooked down and strained to use the fat itself as a cooking medium.
Classic dishes
American
- BLT sandwich — Crisp bacon layered with lettuce and tomato between toasted bread.
- Bacon and eggs — A breakfast staple pairing crisp bacon with eggs cooked to order.
- Cobb salad — A composed salad featuring rows of chopped bacon, egg, chicken, and blue cheese.
- Bacon cheeseburger — A beef burger topped with crisp bacon and melted cheese.
- Baked beans with bacon — Beans slow-baked with bacon for smoky, savory depth.
- New England clam chowder — A creamy chowder built on rendered bacon or salt pork for its savory base.
- Bacon-wrapped scallops — Scallops wrapped in bacon and seared or broiled until the bacon crisps.
Italian
- Spaghetti alla carbonara — A pasta traditionally made with guanciale, though bacon is a common substitute for its smoky edge.
- Pasta alla gricia — A simple Roman pasta of rendered cured pork, pecorino, and black pepper, often made with bacon.
French
- Frisée aux lardons — A bistro salad of curly endive tossed with warm bacon lardons and a poached egg.
- Quiche Lorraine — An egg and cream custard tart studded with bacon lardons.
- Coq au vin — Chicken braised in red wine with bacon lardons, mushrooms, and pearl onions.
Spanish
- Dates wrapped in bacon — A tapas bite pairing sweet dates with salty, crisped bacon.
British & Irish
- Full English breakfast — A fried breakfast plate built around crisp bacon alongside eggs, sausage, and toast.
- Bacon butty — Crisp bacon piled into buttered bread, often with brown sauce or ketchup.
- Colcannon with bacon — Mashed potato and cabbage enriched with crisped bacon bits.
Substitutions
- Pancetta — Use diced pancetta in place of bacon for a less smoky, more purely savory result -- render it the same way.