I did a small comparison between the sous vide method and my usual in-the-oven-on-a-rack method using thick slices of supermarket bacon. Edited to add: I did the sous vide step @ 145 deg F for ~ 24 hrs. That's my only experience, so I'm no expert. I liked the sous vide method enough to want to try it again but I'm pretty sure the oven method will remain my go-to for cook-ahead bacon.
3 hours ago, MelissaH said:How was the mess factor?
You still get some grease splattering when you sear off the sous vide bacon but it's significantly less than when pan cooking raw slices. The slices remained flat and did not curl or bubble up even though I didn't use a press or anything like that.
3 hours ago, MelissaH said:One of the things that appeals to me about the idea of SV bacon is that most of the fat is rendered off in a closed system
Here is the liquid that I drained from the bag after sous vide and before pan cooking the bacon. This is from 5 or 6 thick slices of bacon. I was surprised that most of the liquid was not fat.
However, I suspect that removing this aqueous liquid helped to minimize the amount of popping and splattering that occurred during the pan cook.
I accidentally poured the fat from the pan into a jar of grease without measuring the volume but I can say that significantly more fat rendered off the bacon during the pan sear than during the sous vide step.
It should be noted that I was going for fairly crisp bacon so I may have cooked out more fat than you would if you wanted softer bacon.
I also tried doing the post-sous vide cook in the oven rather than on the stove top. I didn't like that result. Perhaps because of the amount of water that came out during the sous vide step, the oven cooked bacon got hard and chewy rather than crispy.
