I Tried the Flour Bacon TikTok Viral Hack and It Sucked

Sometimes I feel deeply disconnected from the “food content” circulating on social media, almost to the point where I doubt my perceptual abilities. Yesterday was such a day. On Facebook, I saw people cooing over an apparently flabby, pale tomato before seeing a woman store fresh blueberries and hard-boiled eggs in the same airtight container . I then tried the popular TikTok bacon hack with good reviews and was ready to sue the world.

Proponents of this trick claim that flouring the bacon before baking “absorbs some of the excess fat, which helps the strips hold their shape” and that it “prevents the bacon from curling, resulting in a very crispy texture without sacrificing juiciness.”

It seemed fake to me – as a solution in search of a problem, especially since I have never had problems with bacon curling in the oven (but more on that later). It was unclear to me how coating the bacon with a fat-absorbing powder would help keep it crisp, as this would naturally cause the fat to hang off the surface of the meat instead of dripping off of it.

I opened a package of freshly bought bacon and compared four floured strips (cooked on top of parchment, as suggested in a review I read ) and four flourless strips (cooked on top of foil, as is my custom).

I put the bacon pan in a cold oven, then set the temperature to 400℉ and bake for about half an hour, just five minutes longer than it took the oven to reach the set temperature.

How much flour is too much flour?

Haters will say that I intentionally failed the test by adding too much flour to the bacon, but I just followed directions. According to TheKitchn review , I have to “believe in the power of flour” and “the more flour, the more crunchy juicy flavor”. Instead of spraying it in clumps, I dusted each strip with a fine mesh sieve, which resulted in a thinner and more even application.

It was too much flour, but any flour is probably too much flour. Even the lightly floured portions had a duller flavor and stickier texture than bare bacon. Nothing about this experience made me want to try it again with less flour, mostly because the flourless bacon was just about perfect.

The flourless bacon was crispier and just as flat.

The piece of bacon I am holding in my hand in the photo above has not been floured. Yet it lay as flat as floured bacon. It was also crispier. The floured bacon didn’t break as easily, but was covered in a sticky, dull layer of flour and bacon grease, turning into a paste in places.

The flour also dulled the taste. The flourless bacon was noticeably saltier, meatier, and smokier, which makes sense because it didn’t have a layer of tasteless flour to soak up the fat and form a muted paste.

How to make flat crispy bacon without flour

The secret to flat bacon isn’t fat retention or absorption, it’s temperature. Whether you’re cooking bacon in a skillet or in the oven , a cold start will ensure it cooks evenly and evenly. We’ve discussed this before, but just to recap:

Basically, when you toss striped bacon into a very hot environment, it seizes, curls, and cooks before the fat has a chance to seep out. It means sticky, not crispy bacon.

Fat needs time to render, and bacon has a lot of fat. When you heat the bacon slowly, it will churn gently without any stickiness, and it’s the sticking caused by sudden temperature changes that causes the bacon to curl.

All you have to do to bake a large skillet with flat, crispy bacon is place it on a flat surface (like a regular baking sheet) and put it in a cold oven. Set the oven temperature to 400℉ and let the bacon warm up slightly as the oven temperature rises. Even if you start cooking bacon in a preheated oven, it will still bake fairly flat without curling too much unless you preheat the pan. (Air is not a very efficient conductor of heat, but metal is.) The fat will slowly render, leaving behind flat, crisp strips of bacon, all with no tricks (and no flour, of course).