Food - Drink
The Trick To Prevent Bacon From Shrinking
By ERIN SHAW
Everyone has their favorite ways to cook with and consume bacon, from a classic BLT sandwich to this fancy bacon and onion jam. The chief frustration when cooking can be bacon's insistence on shrinking up while it cooks, but there is a simple tactic to keep that bacon crispy yet smooth.
The way to keep bacon from shrinking up while cooking it is to rinse it in cold water, pat it dry and then bake it in the oven. Rinsing with cold water removes a little bit of the fat from the bacon, which can help reduce shrinkage.
However, the cold-water rinse is less important than baking it in the oven, and rinsing bacon can often lead to lessening its flavor. Instead, laying bacon flat on a cooking sheet and cooking it at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 18 to 20 minutes is far more likely to reduce shrinkage than frying the bacon in a pan.