Home › The World's Kitchen › Broiled Bacon
Broiled Bacon
With a keen knife cut the under bones off a fine breakfast bacon; pare both edges, also the end (opposite side to the string end, which is used to hang it up). With a sharp knife cut the necessary number of slices for immediate use. To have it crispy and tasty, thin slices are always preferable, both for broiling and frying. Always cut them crosswise, never lengthwise. Arrange the slices on a broiler, and broil on a moderate fire for two minutes on each side; dress on a hot dish and serve immediately.
For frying--fry for two minutes on each side, in a frying pan with a little hot fat. Bacon should always be kept by the string in a dry, cool place; never on the ice.
This is instruction for butchering and cooking a whole side of bacon, written when bacon came home as a slab rather than a shrink-wrapped pack. Most of it translates directly; one line about storage does not.
- Do not follow the storage adviceHanging bacon by its string in a cool dry room worked for heavily salted, often smoked slab bacon that had been cured for weeks. Modern bacon is mildly cured, high in moisture and sold refrigerated; keep it at 40F or below and freeze what you will not use within a week.
- "Under bones" and paringA breakfast bacon of this period was a cured slab still carrying rib bones and a hard rind. Slab bacon from a butcher may still need the rind trimmed; supermarket rashers need none of this and you can start at the broiling step.
- Crosswise, not lengthwiseThe point is to cut across the grain of the muscle and fat layers so each slice shows alternating lean and fat. Cut the length of the slab and you get long strips of mostly fat or mostly lean that cook unevenly.
- ThicknessThe recipe does not specify a thickness; 'thin' here is probably close to a standard supermarket cut. Thicker slices will need noticeably longer and are better started in a cold pan.
- "A moderate fire"Over coals this means a bed past its flaming stage, glowing grey. Under a modern overhead broiler, set the rack about 4 inches from the element.
- The two-minute timingAccurate for thin slices over a decent heat, but bacon goes from limp to burnt in seconds at the end. Watch it rather than the clock, and pull it a shade before it looks done since it crisps as it cools.
- The fat in the panThe instruction to fry in "a little hot fat" may reflect a leaner, drier cured bacon. Today's bacon renders plenty of its own; a dry pan started over medium heat is enough.
- YieldThree to four thin slices per person as a breakfast portion.
Slab bacon hung by a string was the ordinary domestic form well into the twentieth century, and a cookbook of this vintage could reasonably assume the reader owned a whole side rather than a package of rashers. The instruction to cut only "the necessary number of slices for immediate use" is the key to the whole entry: an uncut slab keeps far better than exposed slices, so the slab was opened only as needed. That logic, and the accompanying warning to keep bacon off the ice, reflect a preservation system built on salt and smoke rather than cold. The distinction between broiling over the fire and frying in a pan is likewise practical: broiling let the fat drip away.