The Ridiculously Delicious Bacon Trick I Always Do for Easter Brunch

I’m not a ‘bacon all the time’ person so much as a ‘bacon once in a while’ person. Bacon is obviously delicious, but I tend to think of it as a treat rather than a breakfast staple, and I rarely add bacon to menu items like burgers. I used to live very close to a fancy butcher shop that made all of its bacon in-house. When I was in the mood to treat myself, I figured it was worth it to splurge on that shop’s fancy bacon. For quite some time in my life, fancy bacon was the only bacon I was cooking and eating — then I moved. I am no longer near a fancy butcher. Now when I cook bacon, it’s what I can source from my local supermarket. 

No shade to supermarket bacon. Even on its worst day, bacon is pretty great. ‘Not the best’ bacon is still bacon. Sometimes though, I want more than run-of-the-mill bacon. I yearn for the fancy bacon with its often slightly out-of-the-box flavors. A little searching brought me to a very easy technique that takes regular bacon to the next level: glazing.

A flavorful glaze is a super simple way to take your bacon to the next level. I mixed up two versions using a few pantry-friendly ingredients to make a savory-sweet glaze and a sweet and spicy version. (The addition of mustard to the savory-sweet glaze pushed it to the top for me, but my husband favored the spicy one.)They were both delicious and have a place in my bacon rotation. They’d be just as good next to eggs as they would on a turkey sandwich. Read on to see how to up your bacon game at home too!

1. Set up your oven and baking sheet. Glazing bacon works best in the oven. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and place a wire rack on top. Cooking the bacon on the rack will allow airflow to both sides of the slices, let the fat drip away and keep the glaze on the bacon (rather than it mixing with the bacon fat if you cooked it in a skillet or without a rack.)
2. Bake. Lay the bacon slices on the wire rack, with a little space between them so they don’t stick together. I find one rimmed baking sheet can hold one package of bacon, which is typically a pound, though the number of slices may vary from brand to brand. Place the bacon in a preheated 400-degree oven and bake until the bacon is beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. 
3. Mix the glaze. While the bacon is in the oven, mix up your glaze. I tried two versions of glaze, brown sugar-Dijon and brown sugar-sriracha. For both versions, mix 2 tablespoons brown sugar (light or dark) with 2 teaspoons either mustard or sriracha and 2 teaspoons of water for 1 pound of bacon. Feel free to experiment with the type of mustard or hot sauce here!
4. Glaze the bacon. Remove the baking sheet from the oven. Use a pastry brush to paint each slice of bacon with glaze. No need to be super precise here. Just make sure each slice gets some glaze. A little goes a long way here, so it’s okay if you wind up with a little extra. Use tongs to flip the slices and paint the opposite side of each slice as well. I finished up with a few cracks of black pepper. 
5. Crisp it up. Place the baking sheet back in the oven until the bacon is fully browned and crisp, an additional 5 to 10 minutes.

• Use plain bacon.  If you’re going to make your own glaze, it’s best to apply it to a blank canvas. The supermarket may not be a fancy butcher shop, but you can certainly find some bacon with extra flavoring, like black pepper or maple, for example. Opt for bacon without extra flavorings, though smoked bacon works fine as it blends well with additional spices.
• Bake it in the oven on a wire rack. This technique won’t work well on the stovetop where bacon is cooking in its own fat. Elevating the bacon on a wire rack allows the glaze to set and helps the bacon get as crispy as possible.
• Get creative with flavors. This technique is really flexible. I stuck with very simple profiles here, using ingredients you’re likely to have on hand, but feel free to experiment. Instead of water you could use coffee or orange juice (orange-sriracha bacon, ooh lala.) Instead of brown sugar, try maple syrup.
• Keep an eye on it. Bacon can go from perfectly browned and crisp to burnt in seconds under most circumstances, but in the oven coated in sugar amplifies that risk. Once the bacon is in the oven for its second round of cooking, watch it carefully to avoid it burning at the edges.