Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Fried Bacon
Fried Bacon
Select a piece of streaky or back and trim off the rind, bone and smoky portions before slicing. Cook in a fryingpan until the fat is transparent and the lean lightly browned on both sides and crisp. Drain on paper, and serve.
A method note more than a recipe, written when bacon came off a slab rather than out of a vacuum pack. The instructions still hold; most of what needs translating is the meat itself.
- Streaky and back"Streaky" is the belly cut sold in the US simply as bacon; "back" is the loin cut, sold in Britain as back bacon and in America approximated by Canadian bacon. Back has far less fat and will dry out at the point streaky is only just crisping.
- Rind, bone and smoky portionsThese directions assume a whole slab still carrying its skin, and sometimes a rib bone at the thick end. Packaged sliced bacon has all of this removed already, so the trimming step drops out entirely. "Smoky portions" most likely means the dark, dry outer surfaces where the smoke struck hardest, which were commonly trimmed away as strong-tasting.
- Slice thicknessThe recipe gives none. Hand-slicing off a slab would have produced something roughly comparable to a modern regular-cut rasher; anything noticeably thicker wants a lower heat and longer time, or the fat will still be white when the lean has browned.
- Start the pan coldRendering, not searing -- The original says only to cook in a fryingpan, but the test it gives (fat transparent) is a rendering test. In a modern pan, starting the slices in an unheated pan over medium-low heat lets the fat melt out gradually; a very hot pan tends to brown the lean before the fat has rendered.
- "Fat transparent" is the real testColor on the lean can mislead, especially with sugar-cured or maple bacon, which browns early. Judge by the fat: opaque white means underdone, clear and glassy means ready.
- Draining"Paper" here meant butcher's or brown kitchen paper. Paper towel works, but a wire rack keeps the underside crisp instead of steaming it soft.
- Save the fatA pound of streaky yields something like a quarter to a half cup of rendered fat. Strain it while warm and refrigerate.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Figure three to four slices per person at breakfast, or one pound for four to six.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 book is as much a professional manual as a household one, which is why a page like this exists at all. The trimming instructions are suggestive of the entry's period. In the 1890s bacon reached kitchens as a cured slab, rind on, and slicing was the cook's job; pre-sliced, packaged bacon is generally dated to the 1920s, and in later decades American households grew less likely to encounter a rind at all. The distinction between streaky and back also marks the book's transatlantic outlook, since back bacon was and remains the British default while the belly cut dominated American tables.