Go Ahead and Roll up Your Bacon
Usually when someone is cooking something in a frying pan, they are limited to the size of that frying pan. This is somewhat true for bacon, but not as much as you might think. Most of the images we see when frying bacon show the stripes neat and even, but you can actually stack them there if you like, even crossing the strips on top of each other for great results.
I first saw this move in Matty Matheson’s Instagram story. I don’t remember what he did, only that he had a frying pan full of bacon strips – I mean, just packed . (Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo; it was featured in his story, not on the grid, and has since disappeared.) I’ve tried this clever maneuver myself since then and am happy to report that it works pretty well.
This is the bacon skillet I made for my breakfast sandwiches last weekend. (I usually bake my own bacon , but I wanted to fry the eggs in one pan.) As you can see, there is not much room for bacon: stripes on stripes, and only part of the bacon touches the pan. … As it turned out, this was not a problem. I put the bacon in a cold skillet and let the fat drain slowly over medium to low heat. The strips shrank as the fat came out of the meat into the pan, creating enough space (and enough fat) so that each piece ended up finely fried in a lot of hot fat. (You may need to push them apart as they shrink just to make sure every bite of bacon is kissed with hot fat.)
A large amount of fat in a small skillet is good – you can twist the fat around the bacon and fry the top and bottom of each strip at the same time. This means fewer rollovers, which is really appreciated by some people like me.
If you are worried about bacon clumping: Don’t do it. It’s bacon. It is inherently non-stick due to its high amount of fat. (The only time I have problems sticking bacon to anything is when I bake very thin strips on the wire rack , which is a very different scenario.) So next time you go to fry bacon in a skillet, don’t worry. Give it space – put it there, start with a cold skillet and cook over medium or low heat. You will end up with super crispy bacon cooked evenly and a lot of residual fat, perfect for frying lacy fried eggs with crispy edges. I say it’s a lot of crisp.