Have you heard of oven-fried bacon, lacquered bacon, curles, weaves, waves, or ever tried your hand at bacon-wrapping various foods?

All delicious techniques, but today, let’s talk about cooking bacon on the lowly griddle.

Some flat crispy bacon.

Warm-up your griddle and let’s get started!

Step 1: Rendering!

Cooking bacon until the gummy white fat melts into grease - that’s what rendering is all about. And, done uniformly, produces delicious crispy bacon.

Uniformity?

Strips can curl and contort while rendering - preventing the bacon from cooking consistently over its length. End-results are often an un-savory cross between a charcoal briquette and greasy noodle.

Use a ‘Bacon Press’ you say?

Standard bacon presses are short and stocky; keeping your hands a little too close to hot grease. And, their solid face / design means you can’t see the bacon cook.

Got a potato masher handy?

Step 2: Say Hello...

Metal mashers with a tall silicone or heat-resistant handle are preferable. Bacon covered in melted plastic gives me a sad; fingers too close to bacon-lava-grease gives me a sadder.

Gently press down on the bacon with the masher until the bacon yields - flip-and-press until you reach the desired crispy-ness as well as an internal temperature of 145 degrees fahrenheit.

Enjoy!