A Hands-Off Trick for Better Bacon

You probably know and love Erin McDowell from her Bake It Up a Notch video series, or all her amazing Food52 recipes, or her debut book, The Fearless Baker, or her upcoming book, The Book on Pie, or—well, you get the idea. Erin’s the best.

Which is why, as soon as she posts what she’s eating on Instagram, I pay attention. Like, this weekend, she made a BLT, her way: with lettuce and tomato, yes, but also with basil and onion. And even the bacon is special, because of course. As many of her followers asked, why and how did it look so crispy, so glossy, so good?

Erin was happy to share all the details:

“I lay out the strips on a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle them with a little bit of brown sugar and lots of black pepper. I bake at 375°F until it’s crisp [Editor's note: at 400°F, we usually start checking after about 15 minutes]. Then, while it’s still hot, I remove the bacon from the tray and overlap the pieces onto each other. As they cool, the caramel firms up and the bacon holds together, making the sandwich easier to eat, too!”

Be right back, need to make an Erin-style, way-better BLT on the immediate.

In the meantime, let us know in the comments how you make a BLT. And here’s even more bacon content because, you know, you can never have enough.

What’s the best way to cook bacon ever? Our columnist Ella Quittner finds out, pitting a slew of techniques against each other. Cast-iron versus nonstick? Does starting in water actually work? And what about the microwave? Buckle up.

Cookbook author Chrissy Teigen’s garlic-roasted bacon would make any egg swoon. As Associate Editor Erin Alexander put it: “I don't think I was fully prepared to love it as much as I did. Those teeny flecks of roasted garlic added both zest and a rich, gentle sweetness, which worked wonders with bacon's inherent fatty, smoky flavors.”

Better bacon because of a...power outage? Thanks, power outage. After 10 minutes at 400°F, you turn the oven off and let the residual heat take care of the rest. “Five more minutes buys you more crisp and less chew. Another five delivers that shatteringly crisp bacon that I love so much,” Gary Schiro writes. “As long as you don’t leave it there for an hour, when the bacon fat might start to congeal, you’re fine.”

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