How to Take Thin Bacon Out of the Package Without Tearing It
I love bacon but hate the packaging. It’s difficult to elegantly open, impossible to reseal and difficult to remove the bacon – a step that is critical if you really want to enjoy bacon. (Besides, what about the random piece of cardboard inside the package? Can we just print the nutritional information on the plastic?) What if that bacon is thin? Well, the bacon removal process gets even more frustrating.
Thin bacon tends to cling to itself. The slices seem to fuse in delicate places, resulting in rips and clumps of torn, sticky pieces of bacon. One solution is to buy thicker bacon, but I actually prefer thin bacon most of the time as you can’t beat its crunchiness (it also wraps things better).
I can’t fix a bag of bacon – maybe I should work on it! – but I can give you a little trick to help you separate thin bacon without tearing it: just let it heat up a bit. Let the bacon sit on the counter for a while (say 10-15 minutes or so) so that the fat softens and melts a little, and it’s the fat that keeps the bacon stuck together.
Depending on the temperature in your kitchen, softening can happen very quickly, so try tugging on the strip a little and see if it comes off easily. If not, let it sit for another five minutes. Once the bacon no longer sticks to itself, you can fry as usual. I’m a big fan of the oven method, but if you have to use a skillet, make sure you start with a cold skillet to melt the fat slowly and give the meat time to brown. (Crunchiness is the main selling point of thin bacon, and I really don’t want you to put up with that wait just to get stretchy, limp bacon.)