BACON
If there’s one sure way to guarantee a relapse in an on-
the-fence vegetarian, it’s to dangle a strip of crisply fried
bacon in front of him.I sometimes think that the only thing keeping my marriage
harmonious is the unduly large number of make-up points I
get every time I bring my wife bacon in bed. These days,
I’m pretty good at cooking it, if I do say so myself, but this
was not always the case. My bacon used to have a severe
case of bipolar disorder: crispy and burnt in some spots,
flaccid, rubbery, and undercooked in others.
Achieving perfectly crisp, evenly cooked bacon is all
about patience. You see, bacon is made up of two distinct
elements—the fat (which is actually a mixture of fat and
connective tissue) and the lean—and each cooks differently.
Fat tends to shrink quickly when heated, but after the initial
shrinking stage, it takes quite a bit of time to finish cooking
as the connective tissue that remains is slowly broken down
(undercooked connective tissue is what causes rubbery
bacon). The lean, on the other hand, shrinks less than the
fat, and because of this differential, your bacon twists and
buckles (just like the bimetal strip inside a thermostat). This
twisting in turn exacerbates the situation, because not only
are your fat and lean shrinking at different rates, but entire
sections of the strip are now cooking at different rates,
depending on whether or not they are in direct contact with
the pan.