I come from a family of bacon-worshippers going back many generations.
A few people here are right. Most are wrong.
First and foremost:
Never supermarket bacon
Cannot overstate. To explain to cyclists would best compare a sub-Halfords BSO that nonetheless says ‘bike’ on the label – with a hand-built, custom-butted-tubed good quality bicycle that will do the job well.
But it doesn’t automatically follow that all high street butchers stock decent traditional bacon. Many just sell similar stuff to supermarkets.
I don’t eat it hardly ever these days so don’t search, but the last time I chanced upon some decent stuff was 2018. It was that good that I remember the year. It took me back to childhood (the quality, taste and texture and scent of the bacon). It was from a small village butcher in South Shrops. Bought three rashers for about £2. The side was kept on a cold stone and sliced with a slicing machine to my preference and wrapped in paper. Nice thick streaky rashers. (The irony is that bacon like this was as common as Raleigh Choppers when I was a kid (industrial town in West Midlands) and yet now ‘traditional’ quality is viewed suspiciously by most today as if it’s some kind of affectation.
Cooking:
I cooked them on gas in a non-stick pan with no oil.
To do this bring up the heat slowly. They will begin to create their own pool of hot fat if you do it correctly. There is little-to-no shrinkage of good quality bacon, unless you like it very well done then it will shrink towards the end of cooking.
After 5-10 mins of gentle cooking the flat, thick rashers should be sizzling in a good quantity of their own rendered fat. This is all that I want on my bread, ie the ‘bacon dip’
Before loading the (white, farmhouse) bread with the rashers, move the rashers aside in the pan and place bread slices one by one in the pan and cook (what are to be the two ‘inside sides’ of the sandwich) for about 10 secs in the hot fat.
Ideally there will be a very gentle crisping around the edge of the bread crusts. You’re not frying the bread until brown, it’s just a very hot dip so the bread remains soft inside yet takes on the tasty hot bacon-fat as a ‘spread’. Now turn off the heat then load the rashers in-between the bread.
Condiments should be minimal, if at all. I sometimes would put a slug of Daddies or OK, or HP sauce (insert favourite brown sauce) on the plate and dip the butty with alternative bites.
But the key to all of this is simply the rendered fat and the quality of the meat.
– No watery pink plastic packed rubbish (ruins everything)
– No spread (ruins the taste)
– No grilling (dries the meat)
– No rush (ruins everything)
I’d take that once in a blue moon over any frequency of plastic-encased pink watery rubbish.