If you didn’t know you could microwave bacon, your life is about to get a whole lot better. Cook bacon easily with Bruce Tretter’s picture book directions.
Nothing better than waking up to the smell and taste of freshly cooked bacon. And there’s no quicker way to cook that bacon than in the microwave oven. In fact, here are three fantastic advantages to cooking bacon in the microwave oven instead of a frying pan:
1. Less cooking time. Pan cooking 4 pieces of bacon takes at least 10 minutes. Cooking the same amount of bacon in the microwave oven takes less than 5 minutes.
2. Less fat and no splatter. The paper towel used to surround the bacon as it cooks in the microwave oven soaks up fat much more efficiently than paper towel placed under freshly cooked bacon that’s just been taken out of the frying pan.
3. Less clean up. The fat soaked paper towel surrounding the bacon as it cooks in the microwave oven goes in the trash. There’s no pan to cool, wipe clean with a paper towel and then later clean with soap and warm water like there is after cooking bacon in a frying pan.
Cooking Time: 3-4 minutes for 4 bacon pieces depending on desired chewy or crisp doneness
Ingredients
1-2 (or more) Slices of Pork or Turkey Bacon per person
Equipment
Microwave Oven
Microwave Oven Safe Plate (large enough to hold bacon pieces)
Large Frying Pan (only used as a container for water to defrost bacon, if needed)
Potholder or Folded Dishtowel
Paper Towels
1. If the bacon is already defrosted, skip to step 2. Otherwise, put the sealed bacon package in a large frying pan and fill with WARM (not HOT) water as shown. Defrosting will take 10-20 minutes. NOTE: I strongly recommend NOT using a microwave oven to defrost frozen bacon or any other food still wrapped in its plastic packaging as research has shown some plastics, when exposed to microwave heat, can melt and leach into the bacon or other food being defrosted.
2. For pork bacon (higher fat content), use 4 pieces of paper towel: 2 pieces underneath the bacon on a microwave oven safe plate and 2 pieces of paper towel to cover the bacon. For turkey bacon (lower fat content) use 2 pieces of paper towel: 1 piece of paper towel underneath the bacon on a microwave oven safe plate and 1 piece of paper towel to cover the bacon.
Place up to 4 bacon pieces on the paper towel covered plate without letting the bacon pieces overlap.
Cover the bacon with paper towel.
3. Put the plate in the microwave oven, and cook using your microwave oven HIGH heat or 100% power for the amount of time shown in the following table according to whether you want the pork or turkey bacon chewy or crisp. NOTE: I used a 1200-watt microwave oven to cook the bacon shown in this recipe. Cooking time will vary depending on your microwave oven wattage.
Chewy Pork Bacon | Chewy Turkey Bacon | Crisp Pork Bacon | Crisp Turkey Bacon |
---|---|---|---|
3 – 3 1/2 minutes for 4 pieces of bacon (or 45 seconds per bacon piece if you’re cooking fewer than 4 pieces) | 2 1/2 – 3 minutes for 4 pieces of bacon (or 40 seconds per bacon piece if you’re cooking fewer than 4 pieces) | 4 minutes for 4 pieces of bacon (or 1 minutes per bacon piece if you’re cooking fewer than 4 pieces) | 3 minutes for 4 pieces of bacon (or 45 seconds per bacon piece if you’re cooking fewer than 4 pieces) |
4. After cooking, use a potholder or folded dishtowel to remove the plate from the microwave oven, and check the bacon for doneness as shown in the table below.
5.To clean up, throw out the paper towel, and either put the dish you used in the dishwasher or clean with warm water and dish soap.
Read more Lifestyle on The Good Life.
Images courtesy of Bruce Tretter
Good stuff. I never know why people are so reluctant to microwave their bacon – it’s so much faster and much easier to clean up.
The same goes for vegetables. People still think that microwaving “kills” nutrients, but that isn’t the case. Microwaving effectively steams vegetables which is one of the best ways to cook them (as nutrients don’t leak out).
Great article! I’ve read that microwaving bacon reduces calories and fat by 40%. Try cooking the bacon half-way and then changing the doubled paper towel under the bacon. Place the new paper towel over the partly cooked bacon, flip the bacon like a pancake and peel off the old paper towel. The bacon finishes cooking faster with the new dry towel underneath, more fat can be rendered and absorbed and the bacon is microwaved – not steamed. With my microwave, I have to switch the inside and outside strips since the outside pieces cook much faster. Even with these extra… Read more »
Thanks for your comment, Rich. I like the idea behind your suggestion, though I’ll probably just stick to the way I cook the bacon now. It could be how my microwave works, but I get even cooking without steaming. I’d probably do it your way if that wasn’t the case. Definitely something I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks! Bruce
Gotta love technology. My little sister has been microwaving bacon for years.