Didn’t check if there has been a previous thread.
Bacon cooks unevenly–fat cooks slower and puffs up, lean cooks quicker and stays down.
How to make it come out the same? Device? How is it done in restaurants?
Bake in a single layer on a tray at 350 for 25 minutes. Little bit less or more depending on how done you want it. No muss, no spatter, no trouble, and perfectly even.
This method works for me, or if you are cooking just a few pieces the stovetop will work- it shouldn’t cook unevenly if you’re flipping it often and the heat isn’t too high.
Same here. I also lay a wire cooling rack on top of the bacon just as a little added insurance against curling.
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I was going to say baking, which also makes bigger batches easy. But I’ve never used a bacon press.
When I discovered baking it, instead of frying it, I thought it was genius. Yes, it cooks evenly. But more importantly I can forget about it and focus on fussing over the eggs, etc. It makes making breakfast for a group oh so much easier I find!
I tried baking bacon, and the amount of work it took to clean the rack afterward put me off ever doing it again. I’m guessing that restaurants have something like a sandwich press/panini press that presses down with full contact and cooks both sides simultaneously.
I save old bacon fat in the freezer for other frying uses, so I’ve gotten in the habit of melting a bunch of old bacon fat in the pan before adding the new bacon. If you get a deep enough layer, it cooks it more evenly.
If you throw out your bacon fat… well… I just don’t know how you live with yourself. 
I’ve heard, but don’t know for sure, that a lot of restaurants deep fry their bacon, under the rationale that they already have the fryer hot, it gets it good and crispy, it cooks it very evenly, and it does so very quickly.
That said, the advice to cook it in the oven is the right one. Microwaving bacon works well also.
Line it with foil.
A bacon press is essential if you’re going to pan fry it, but baking it (I do 20 minutes at 450) works best.
Two tips that make pan-frying bacon much easier:
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Planning to cook eight slices? Peel off a single eight-slice hunk and throw it in the pan (this used to be the official instructions on bacon packages when I was a kid). It will be easy to separate once it gets hotter. Laboriously peeling off one slice at a time from a cold slab of bacon is a sucker’s job. And lining the pan with single slices is counter-productive – it uses up the space way too soon. The way bacon shrinks, those eight slices, when cooked, will take up the space of about three raw ones.
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Cut it in half. Full-length slices are hard to deal with and just beg to get overdone in the middle while the ends are still half-raw. Half-length slices are much easier to manage, including much easier to get done evenly.
Never press bacon! It removes the personality from each slice.
Yeah, the idea of flat bacon and that there are “bacon presses” out there to flatten bacon always seemed a bit odd to me. I guess I grew up on bacon being somewhat wavy and somewhat differently shaped from piece to piece that flat bacon just seems weird to me.
If you don’t want to bake/roast it, and aren’t saving/collecting the bacon fat, start by cooking it in ~1/4" of water, and let the water evaporate off before frying the bacon.
Microwaving works, is easy, and far less messy, but in terms of flavor (for supermarket bacon), frying > roasting >>> microwave. I’ll only use the microwave when I’m having something like toaster waffles. Of course, this is just IM(NS)HO.
I use one because I don’t like slimy bits of fat. Perhaps baking would be a better choice for me. I’ve had an aversion to fat since an unfortunate preschool incident.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. The ruffled ridges and un-evenness is part of what makes it flavorful. Bacon is basically meat candy, after all. I have a heavy Lodge cast iron press and never use it, not for bacon that is. The trick is to have a decent ratio of fat to lean in the bacon. Thick bacon is nice, but after extensive study have come to the conclusion that a thinner cut cooked quickly is just better. Of all the things The Andy Griffith Show taught me, one that I use now and then is the advice Gomer (Jim Nabors) provided. “Put just a little bit of brown sugar on the bacon while yer fryin’ it up.”
Lean bacon especially can be improved by frying in extra bacon grease. For uses of bacon grease (you DO save your bacon grease, right?) is seasoning cast iron cookware, and for cooking popcorn.
Microwave ovens are just tongue burning rubber food generators. They work great for boiling water. It makes a passable scrambled egg, but not for any serious use. Oven baking works, but true bacon enthusiasts know that pan frying is the One True Way™
I bake my bacon. I’ll throw it on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet at 425. While that’s heating, I’ll through together a couple cheddar/garlic biscuits. When those are assembled I drop the biscuits on the other end of the baking sheet and continue baking for about 13 minutes. Everything comes out done at the same time.
StG
To your first point: If I know I’m going to have bacon, I usually get it out about a half-hour or so before cooking time so it comes to room temperature and I’m not trying to peel off cold bacon. Also, as for frying single slices, you can add more slices as the previous ones cook down.
To your second point: I do that all the time, works great!
I have a bacon press but have never used it as I don’t use a pan big enough to fit it.
I have a bacon press somewhere. Used it once. I don’t care if my bacon is flat or cooked evenly, I prefer the variation. Baking on a pan or a rack will get it done very evenly. Bacon keeps cooking after you take it out of the pan, it should be very hot, so don’t wait for it to get burnt, put it on paper towels to drain and cover with foil and it will cook through fairly evenly in about 5-10 more minutes.