Bacon Weaving

Y'all probably never thought you'd see a subject line like that, did you?

No, I haven't lost my mind. I saw a picture online a few days ago, of someone else's woven bacon, and I was inspired.
Mother's Day isn't a day off for me, so... since I'm going to be cooking anyway, I might as well make it fun. And weaving bacon is fun! At first I tried to justify it, postulating that perhaps it would cook more-evenly, or be easier to flip during cooking. The truth of the matter is, I like to play with my food. And not even Martha Stewart would weave her bacon. A chance to one-up The Woman is always appreciated.

To begin, lay out strips of bacon... these are actually too far apart, as I was picturing the whole thing wrong in my head. You want them right next to each other. This was just plain ol' Oscar Meyer bacon... "America's Favorite" or whatever. I prefer a snooty applewood-smoked bacon, but, this is pretty tasty.

There really isn't a need to weave efficiently... it's not that big of a project where time-saving tips matter. However, after the first couple of cross-pieces are placed, you can flip up the ones that need to go on top, lay down the new piece of bacon, and then flip them back down. It's easier than doing over-under, over-under with limp meat.
Before you even know it, you're done!



Here it is, ready to go into the oven, I inverted the cooling rack over the bacon, and flipped the whole thing, including the cutting board. It worked well, to keep things from getting rearranged.

Now that I think about it, I guess I could have easily done the weave directly on the rack. Oh, well.

375-ish, 10 minutes per side, two flips, for a total of about 30 minutes. My oven is possessed by an obnoxious demon, however, and doesn't keep an accurate temperature, so... your mileage will certainly vary.

A work of art

I used kitchen shears to cut it into serving sizes, because it wasn't crisp enough to break. I would have liked it much crisper in the middle... next time I'll try broiling at the end. Maybe a chunk of time at a lower heat would bake some of the extra grease

Woven bacon, real champagne... life is good.