4 days Ago By Alex Evans
Is there anything more joyous on a quiet Sunday morning than a guilty pleasure bacon sarnie? Whether you call it a bread roll, a bap or a barmcake, a few rashers of bacon stuck between bread is always a winning breakfast, even if it’s not especially healthy and it takes a lot of effort messing with frying pans. But there’s a little-known method to make what food experts call ‘perfectly crispy’ bacon with fewer calories, in a shorter time - and with no frying pan mess. No, it’s not an air fryer - but the humble microwave.
So after spending a lot of time telling people how this recipe works, I decided to take it for a test drive and see if I could replicate ‘perfectly crispy microwave bacon in 45 seconds’. Making bacon often involves lots of smoking frying pans, spitting oil and mess. You have to clean up all that oil and fat, trying not to block your sink with it, and avoid burning yourself or filling the kitchen with bacon smoke that might set your alarms off in the process.
Microwave bacon, or so the experts claim, does away with all that. Instead, you simply pop your raw rashers on a plate, zap it in the microwave, then slap it on some bread. It’s actually a method my dad used to swear by - he used to cook eggs and bacon in the microwave, and he insisted it worked.
My dad did have a tendency towards the eccentric at times - for example, he used to use olive oil as sun cream, something I desperately tried to talk him out of. But on this he was certain. Having stumbled upon the recipe for microwave bacon online, I realise I may have been doing the old man a disservice.
Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all. In fact, when I tried this, I did indeed get easy, tasty bacon. All I did was put it on a plate, and shoved it on for a few minutes.
The one problem I had was that 45 seconds was not nearly long enough. I don’t know if I just have a lousy microwave, but after 45 seconds it was still breathing. I had to try another 30 seconds at a time until it had been in for three and a half minutes, and even then it wasn’t super crispy, just slightly crisp, which is how I prefer it.
If you want it like American-style bacon glass, maybe this isn’t for you. Otherwise, I put it in a gluten free bun (sadly I’m coeliac) with a bit of ketchup and I would never have known it came from the microwave. I didn’t die of food poisoning - and no washing up either.
Sorry dad, turns out you were right all along!.
