How to Have Bacon Ready to Eat at All Times

For the non-vegetarian breakfast lover, bacon is a staple of any meal. But even the most devoted bacon fan will admit that it’s not the most convenient thing to make. Each method has its drawbacks—pan-frying only allows you to cook a few strips at once, and baking a whole batch creates so much oil that it feels like it’s all up in your pores. Plus, there’s the problem of persistent bacon smell—if you make it every day, odds are that you and your furniture permanently give off the bacon smell, which is arguably off-putting when taken out of context.

Obviously, all of this is worth it, because bacon is the best. But there’s a hack I recently discovered that has been truly life-changing.

For the last several years, I’ve mainly eaten nitrate-free bacon to avoid triggering my migraines. This kind of bacon often comes in a massive package, and being a single 4’10” woman with eyes permanently larger than my stomach, I found that whenever my central Pennsylvania-based mother would send me back to New York with massive honkin’ packages of bacon, I felt a bit daunted in the face of all that action. I don’t want to make all of it at once, because why would I need several pounds of bacon? But I don’t want to let any of it go to waste, either. What’s a gal to do?

One day last month, it hit me. I had a whole loaf of bread, a whole head of lettuce, several tomatoes, a shit-ton of bacon, and a couple dollars in my bank account. I realized I could just eat BLTs all week. So I decided to make an entire package of bacon, use a little on my first BLT of the week, and then put the rest in a tupperware container to be placed in the freezer.

At first, I was a little skeptical about my decision. What if the texture is weird when I reheat it? Can I just microwave frozen bacon, or do I have to recook it every time? What if heating it up will make it too tough? Did I just waste a whole package of bacon?

But it turned out to be the best breakfast-related decision I’ve ever made in my life. Because I had dabbed all the bacon with paper towels before placing it in the freezer, I could easily warm it up without worrying about mounds of grease. All I had to do was pop a few frozen strips in the microwave and it tasted like I had just made it. Suddenly, I had all the bacon I wanted to throw into any dish—without any of the overpowering stench, greasy utensils, and overall bacon-related hassle.

From now on, incorporate bacon into your meal planning. Devote a few hours of an evening every few weeks or so to mass-cooking a batch of bacon with which to grace your freezer. Voila: You have bacon at all times, just a 20-second microwave session away.