Here are my top 3 ways to get the most out of the bacon in your life…

1. Don’t Be Afraid of Bacon

This is important. Bacon will not kill you. You are not losing 10 minutes off your life for every slice you eat. The fat, saturated fat and cholesterol is not an issue. Your body knows what to do with those and puts them to good use. It actually has a much harder time dealing with pancakes drenched in syrup, hashbrowns fried in vegetable oil or the bisquits covered in something like gravy that people eat with their bacon. Bacon is usually the innocent bystander getting blamed for many crimes it didn’t commit. Enjoy your bacon with some form of a natural food like eggs and you’ll find it just might be good for you and keep you happy and full for a nice little while.

2. Buy Good Quality Bacon

The higher quality bacon you can get the better. The ideal here would be pasture raised bacon from a local farmer, farmer’s market or farm that sells online (I often use US Wellness Meats).  When these are not a viable option, the next best thing is to find the best version available at the grocery store. The two brands I get most often are Niman Ranch and Applegate. These are antibiotic and hormone free, which is an important thing to look for, and do not contain gluten or other fillers. In general the fewer ingredients the better and you will often see the better brands usually come uncured, although cured vs. uncured is less of an issue than we used to think. I also do not worry about nitrates or nitrites, there is little evidence this means much of anything to our health and there is some evidence it may even be beneficial (for more on this, check out my post on nitrates).

3. Bake Your Bacon

The common preparation for bacon is skillet frying, but for my money (hands down), the best way is to bake bacon in the oven. Like most foods, it is healthier to bake instead of fry and I have found baking is by far the most simple, cleanest and tastiest was to cook bacon. My go to style: on a cookie sheet with parchment paper (be sure to fold up the edges of the paper so the grease stays on the paper), set the oven for 300 degrees and cook for about 20 minutes (longer for crispier, shorter for softer). Go do something else for a while, come back when the timer goes off. Put the bacon on a plate, let it cool, and enjoy. The clean up is easy. Let the grease cool on the parchment for a while, then ball up the paper and through it away. Done. No pans to wash or stoves to clean. If you don’t have parchment (like us this morning), you can use the style seen in the picture or just put the bacon directly on the cookie sheet. A little more clean up and the cooking takes a few more minutes but the end result is the same.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading, have a great baked bacon week!

P.S. How do you enjoy your bacon? I’m always looking for new ideas…

My bonus ways to enjoy bacon:

4. Wrap It Around Something

I like steak, shrimp or sweet potatoes but literally anything goes here. Bacon can take nearly anything to the next level.

5. Dip It In Dark Chocolate

Enough said for those who know this treat. Worth a try for those who don’t.