The kitchen was the center of the house and if you were in the kitchen, you would likely be put to work. I soon learned to cook breakfast meats.
Mother taught me that you start your bacon cooking in a hot pan while country ham requires a cold pan. I cooked many pans of bacon as teenager. I suspect I learned to focus on it because that was all that I was allowed to do. When I was at the Mount Airy house, I always felt like the guest of honor and at least in the early days, there wasn’t much that I was allowed to do.
How to cook perfect bacon.
Start by trying to pick a package of bacon that has evenly distributed lean and fat. Too much of either will make the bacon harder to cook. While I have cooked bacon on electric stoves, gas stoves, and even on campfires, I prefer an electric frying pan. I usually start the pan at about 375F and turn it down a little once the bacon starts cooking.
If you are going to cook bacon, pay attention to it, the eggs and toast can wait. If you are doing it right, not long after you have the pan filled, it will be time to start turning the bacon over. If the bacon starts popping a lot, turn it down a little.
If it appears to not be cooking, turn the temperature up. Cooking exceptional bacon requires practice. Sometimes if the bacon is curling up too much, I take kitchen scissors and make little snips in the bacon as it cooks. It is a trial and error thing but easy to get the hang of with a little effort and practice.
Bacon usually has to be turned four to five times. Most people like their bacon crisp and it will harden a little after taken out of the pan so don’t cook it until it is too hard. As the slices of bacon brown, I take them out and place them on a paper towel.
Unless you are cooking more than a pound of bacon there is no need to drain the grease from the pan between pans of bacon. Sometimes the second pan will cook a little better than the first.