Minds out of the gutter and into the kitchen, please. 
I want bacon! Tell me types of meat (pork only, please) and ways to cook it.
I’m a little confused. Do you mean suggestions for cuts of pork? Do you mean actual bacon (pork belly)? Or is it something else entirely?
If it’s the first, I would go with a pork shoulder (also called a pork butt, even though it’s from nowhere near the rump) smoked for several hours to an internal temperature of 160F and then reverse seared for the cracklin’.
Actual bacon. Maple cured, applewood, hickory smoked, pepper bacon etc.
Fried, microwaved, baked, made in rice cooker (don’t laugh-my son made it that way) etc.
Anything else added to it etc.
That being the case, here are my go-tos:
- Thick cut (preferably Wright’s)
- If I’m making a lot of it I’ll use the convection oven at 400F and use a cookie sheet
- If I’m just serving myself I prefer a dry, well-seasoned cast iron skillet
- Take it out of the pan when you think it’s “almost done”. Chewy is better than petrified, and it keeps cooking after you take it out. Crunchy bacon fat is to die for, but crunchy bacon meat is only good for crushing up on a salad.
- If it’s for eating on its own and not an ingredient in something else, avoid nitrites/nitrates (you want uncured or dry aged).
I have issues with sweet and savory, so I avoid maple bacon at all costs. If you like that sort of thing, have at it. Smoked bacon really doesn’t improve the flavor, just the aroma (which is it’s own form of pleasure), but it doesn’t hurt it either.
Oh bacon! You blessed beast.
How we blather and boast of your particular attributes.
Actually you smell better than you taste.
Good. Like really good bacon is hard to find.. if you find some. Buy two. Next time it will be different. They do it to confound you.
Really tho’ pigs is pigs. It matters what they’re fed as to their savory-ness.
We like, not too thin, (no maple, brown sugar, apple smoked abominations), just bacon. Good mix of meat to fat.
Always have a crowd so it goes in the oven. High heat for 5 min. Then down low til finished. Put on parchment or silpat on cookie sheet with a high edge.
Pour off the grease while warm.
That’s the gift of the gods. That bacon grease. Worth its weight in gold.
Pretty hard to beat Costco’s house bacon, both in cost and flavor. Nothing spectacular, but tasty and the price is right. Barring that, I usually just buy Hormel Black Label. Never cared much for thick sliced unless it’s used for carbonara or some such.
People swear by makin’ bacon in the oven, but I rarely make enough of it to warrant turning on the oven (two slices). I also have a cast iron bacon press that I never use.
I tried guanciale for the first time about a week ago to make my carbonara. It delivers a cleaner flavor than bacon does, as most bacon has a smokey element, but I don’t think it’s worth the extra cost just to be a purist.
I had microwave bacon once and didn’t like it. I’m told that an air fryer works well, but my kitchen is tiny and another appliance would probably exceed critical mass in there.
I don’t like maple flavoring in either sausage or bacon. Breakfast sausage should have sage and maybe pepper. Stop fucking with what the gods intended.
Did you try to make it with a grill insert, or did you just use a pan?
It’s been a long time, but I think it was just on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Amen to that.
“Uncured” bacon is still cured using the nitrates/nitrites present in the celery juice or celery powder that they use. I’ve read it may even have higher concentrations of these than traditionally cured bacon.
Crowd, schmowd. Since I discovered “baking” instead of pan-frying bacon, that’s the way I do it even if I’m making small quantities. Never going back to the frying pan for bacon.
Takes longer in the oven, yes, but the bacon is better cooked IMHO, and SO much less messy!
Preach, sister. ALL rendered meat fats from good quality meat should be strained (optional) and saved for future cooking. When I think of how my mom used to collect all the grease from bacon and roasts and chickens etc. in old soup cans and then throw them away, I’m dumbfounded.
(You can store small amounts of meat fat in a jar in the freezer for basically forever, and you don’t have to thaw it to use: the fat-to-liquid ratio is so high that you can just dig out or chip off a chunk of the stuff straight out of the freezer. My jars of saved bacon grease and other meat fat always get used up long before forever, though.)
Ever had bacon sausage? Truly manna from heaven.
God, I want some …
There’s bacon that qualifies as “uncured” according to FDA labelling rules, and there’s uncured bacon you get from a butcher/farmer that hasn’t had anything added to it but salt. I was referring to the latter.
I recently tried a couple fancy types of bacon from Zingerman’s including jowl bacon, which was strong-flavored but too fatty for our tastes. We’ll probably stick to thick cut Kroger house brand or whatever’s on sale.
Pan-fried on the electric cooktop with initial heat set at medium, flip the bacon over after a few minutes, then after a few more minutes heap it up in the pan and continue cooking at low-medium with attention to what parts are getting done and which need more cooking, flipping/rearranging the slices as needed. Comes out fine when adequately attended to; none of that messing with ovens, microwaves or (ecch) pre-cooked reheated bacon.
Sunday is bacon breakfast day at Stately Jackmannii Manor.
That’s the guanciale I was referring to. It works well for carbonara, but likely not much good for anything else.
Hog jowl is the bomb.
I mean a pot of beans with a hog jowl and man oh man. That’s a feast. Add corn bread and you’ll think you’ve been transported.
If it’s the same as that Guan stuff.
Probably isn’t.
NM me. 
Ah, I consider that “salt-cured” bacon. Curing doesn’t automatically mean nitrates. You can cure only using salt, you just need more of it.
True - my understanding is that the nitrates come from brining, hence I also added “dry-aged”. I guess I should have specified dry-cured versus wet-cured.
I am a simple pup, and seek simple solutions to life’s challenges. And what I find is that I need bacon right after frying a couple of eggs for breakfast, or right after frying a single egg for a toasted egg sandwich. IOW, when I need bacon, I need it fast, and the only thing that works for me is “instant bacon” – that is, precooked bacon slices that I throw on the already-hot fying pan. It begins to sizzle in a few seconds, and it’s done, with no mess!
There are several different reputable brands of pre-cooked bacon around here and all seem to be derived from good quality bacon. They have the added advantage that they keep practically forever, even after being opened (before being opened, they don’t normally even need to be refrigerated).
Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m a big fan. The only time I’d use regular bacon is if I was going through large quantities of it – making some large bacon-based dish or feeding a family.
That’s just Italian for hog jowl.