Can bacon be made on the grill? Yes – if done with care. But you can’t just throw strips of bacon on a hot grill; that will create dramatic flare-ups as the bacon fat renders. You will end up with charred bacon, or worse, bacon ash. Done correctly, grilled bacon is smoky, delicious and just the right amount of crispy. Read our tips for grilling bacon below, and start a new backyard tradition.

How to Grill Your Bacon

Why grill bacon at all when you have a perfectly good skillet in the house? One obviously reason is to keep all the cooking in one place. You need bacon for those burgers, and you don’t want the patties to burn while you heat a pan inside.

If you are cooking over coal or wood, the smoke will make your bacon even better. But if you have a propane grill, there’s no shame in that. Bacon cooked outside is just tastier, and it will drive the neighbors wild with that distinctive scent wafting down the street. This also means that bacon smell, or perfume as we like to call it, won’t linger in your curtains.

How to Cook Bacon on the Grill

We mentioned the flare-ups. This is the enemy of bacon; the thin strips will just burn when they come in contact with a flame. With so much fat, bacon is just begging for a grease fire. And nobody wants that.

One way to avoid this is the aluminum foil method: lay out a double sheet of foil, measured to fit the bacon you want to grill, with the edges turned up to catch the bacon fat. Lay your bacon strips on this surface, and flip them over when you need to, just as you would in a pan.

Another technique involves using indirect heat. This means putting bacon directly on the grill, across the bars of the grate. Oil the grates, just as you would for any other meat. Do not put the bacon right over the fire, but just close enough so that it will cook. Be sure to clean the grill well after it cools, because there will be bacon fat collected, just waiting for the next time you heat up the grill to catch fire.

You can also thread bacon on a skewer, like a ribbon, and grill over indirect heat. Add a glaze in the last minutes before serving, and you have a very tasty pre-burger appetizer.

Shop our natural, uncured bacon selections at dartagnan.com.

Since 1985, D’Artagnan has been at the forefront of the farm-to-table movement, producing superior tasting products by partnering with small ranches and farms. We are committed to free-range, natural production, sustainable and humane farming practices and no use of antibiotics or hormones. That’s why D’Artagnan products have been revered by America’s most renowned chefs for over 30 years. We offer the same high-quality products to home cooks at dartagnan.com, along with recipes and guides to help you live the tasty life.

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