Day 1: Bacon and the Importance of Kitchen Tools

My husband M and I have finally moved to our new place. Hooray!

Granted, we're still transitioning by shuttling to and from our parents' homes to pick up our personal belongings and our wedding gifts, most of which are things for the kitchen. But today was THE day for me.

Today was the first day that I would have to make breakfast.

To prepare for this momentous occasion, M and I went to the grocery last night to stock up on the easiest things to cook: breakfast food. Bacon, hotdogs, tocino, corned beef, Spam, and tuna. All things that, if all else failed, I knew I could pop into the microwave or just eat with bread (haha).

And so this morning, while M was still in the shower, I decided to start with my all-time favorite, BACON. I already knew that I could just pop this into the microwave and it would come out crispy (just the way I like it!), but felt that I would be cheating myself if I didn't at least try to cook it in a pan first.

So I referred to Huffington Post's article "How To Cook Bacon: Three Ways to Achieve Perfection" to test if I would, indeed, have the perfect bacon. Out of the three ways presented, I chose The Traditionalist. In my attempt to cook bacon, I learned a few things:

1. You have to know your stove.
The first step in the article said to start with a cold frying pan. So I did just that-- put the cold bacon on a cold pan. Then I waited forever. And then I got impatient, so I decided to crank our electric stove to the highest setting, just to speed things up. Sure enough, in a few minutes, the oil started to sizzle. Then I panicked and decided to turn it back low. The power light was on, then off, then turned on again, and I got so paranoid that I didn't know what setting I was on anymore. Meanwhile, the bacon continued to sizzle in the pan. Hallelujah, despite my fiddling around, it was actually cooking!

I grew up with a gas stove in the house, so I would see how high or how low the flames would go. It's a different story with an electric hot plate, so it seems that it really will take a few hits and misses to figure out just how hot is hot.

M later told me that after his experience with the stove, it seems that it automatically turns off when there's enough heat, then turns back on when the heat is not enough. How it has some self-regulating feature, I have no idea. There must be sorcery involved in this stove.


2. You need the right tools.
When M stepped out of the shower and smelled the bacon cooking, he happily said, "Wow, it smells good in here!" He looked over at the pan and said, "You should flip that over now. Where are your tongs?" I looked at him blankly and realized, we forgot the set of kitchen tools in my parents' house! No spatula, no tongs, no fork-looking pasta scooper thingy (I will eventually find out what this is really called, don't worry), nothing! Just our silverware. So regretfully, he said, "You should step aside. I'm gonna need to use a spoon and fork on this."

Just like that, I got relegated to dishwasher duties. Later, he explained to me that not only was it dangerous to use a metal spoon and fork in cooking (even I know how metal conducts heat!), these could also damage the pan. And if there's one thing I learned from our wedding registry, pans can be hella expensive! So later in the day, I made it a point to pop in quickly at home (and by that I mean brave one hour traffic at noontime) to get all the other kitchen stuff we would need.

3. What the Internet says is true-- don't crowd the pan. 
I am happy to report that the Internet has not failed me here. The bacon needs to breathe. I only put three pieces of bacon in the pan, making sure they weren't sticking to each other, and I liked seeing how each piece sizzled in the oil. They were all cooking evenly! I got something right! And I could just imagine that piling on the bacon in one pan would lead to uneven temperatures throughout. So this totally makes sense, even to a newbie like me!


4. The bacon is still cooking even when it's already on the plate.
When my bacon was still in the pan, I felt it was still looking a little pale. But M said, "You should take that out already. It'll come out crunchy. I'll make the next batch because I like mine a bit soggy." So I grudgingly took out my pale bacon and watched as M cooked his own batch. The next time I looked at my plate, the bacon was crunchy, just like he promised! Now I know that I shouldn't wait for it to seem crunchy in the pan because if I do, I'll end up with burnt bacon on my plate!


Day 1 was an eye-opener for both M and I. On my end, I've realized that learning how to cook really requires you to study your equipment first, and the right way to use them. And for M, he learned the true extent of my cluelessness in the kitchen. So much so that he's volunteered to cook for the first month, but of course I said no. How will I learn if I just watch him do everything?! We've decided to compromise: I'll let him teach me how to use the stove, and he'll leave me alone to learn how to make pasta dishes.

With that, I already have Day 2's lesson in mind! Stay tuned!