Bacon on the Grill

Bacon seriously should be a food group of its own.  We love bacon!  Bacon can be cooked in a skillet but there are other ways to cook bacon that makes it a bit healthier.  When cooking larger amounts of bacon I like to cook on a rack over top of sided cookie sheet in the oven or grill.  The grease drains off while the bacon strips stay rather flat.  Some line the cookie sheet with tin foil for easy cleanup but I don't.  The reason is once the bacon grease cools I scoop it up for use in cooking later.

We had a fair amount of company during our recent stay at our vacation home.  One of our guests generously offered to cook the bacon, on the grill no less.  Now this was rather interesting because the bacon was cooked directly on the grill grates without using any baking sheet at all.  I found this to be a rather interesting cooking method.

Bacon produces a lot of grease which means flare-ups on the grill.  However, cooking on the grill keeps the heat and grease splatters out of the house.  So of course I was interested in this cooking method.  Pictured is the cooking bacon on the grill grates. 

All of the grease from the cooking bacon dripped down onto the grill and was burned off.  This did result in more flare-ups.  Our friend cooked the bacon to crisp as pictured.  I like my bacon crisp but my husband does not.  Still this was a lovely way to cook the bacon and definitely one I will be experimenting with in future. 

Surprisingly despite more flare-ups than would be expected with higher fat content meat, the grill cleanup was minimal.  There was grease in the drip pan which is to be expected.  The downside to using the grill is the bacon grease can't be saved for later use but it keeps the heat out of the kitchen which is quite desirable at our vacation home.  All in all though this really resulted in a lovely bacon.