Suburban Living Science Report #1: Bacon on the gas grill.
Our humble suburban Deck House (factory-built in Acton, Massachusetts for the last 50 years or so… until a couple of weeks ago when the company sent all of the workers home) contained a very functional electric range back in 1968. At that time it was acceptable for a suburban family to drive around in a car and simmer a sauce by pressing the “simmer” setting on the stove. Along with the SUV, however, the modern suburban family needs a Viking range. In 2000, therefore, the kitchen was expanded and a 48″ wide Viking range installed. Viking takes the word “burner” literally and the lowest setting on the burner is hot enough to boil a vat the size of what you’d see the witches stirring in a high school production of Macbeth.
With six burning burners, you need a massive range hood to pull the heat out of the house before it burns down. Thus a 1200 CFM range hood was installed, which makes as much noise as a departing business jet. The combination of a fully licensed and trained architect and fully licensed and trained contractor resulted in the 10″ duct carrying this 1200 CFM stream of air terminating in a roof cap that restricts the flow to a mere trickle. Consequently, it is impossible to cook or grill anything without having all of the smoke bypass the hood and set off the smoke alarm.
Hosting a waffle brunch today for a bunch of friends, I grappled with the question of how to cook 4 lbs. of bacon from Costco (I deleted Whole Foods from the car’s GPS system when the Dow slid below 8000). Not wanting to fill the house with bacon grease, I decided to use the outdoor gas grill. My friend David was the first to arrive at the party. When I explained what I was doing, he said “Do you want me to call the Fire Department now?”
It turns out that bacon on a standard outdoor gas grill comes out great if you’re patient. The grease disappears magically into the burners. There is no pan to clean up. You can grill about 1 lb. of bacon at a time. We experimented with different heat settings. High heat results in a slightly unpleasant burned taste. Medium-low heat for 20-30 minutes is what we found to be optimum. If doing a large quantity, start an hour or two ahead of the party and microwave just before serving.
[Side report on waffle mix: We had some waffles made from a nicely packaged organic mix from Whole Foods (purchased a week or two before the latest meltdown). They were okay, but not as good as those from the Trader Joe’s mix, which was approximately 1/6th the price. Frozen blueberries to go with the waffles were $12 at Whole Paycheck. The exact same brand, size, and packaging was $7 at Costco.]
My wife bakes bacon in the oven. She puts the bacon on a cooling rack and the cooling rack on a cookie sheet to catch the grease. It is consistently great and doesn’t cause the house to smell.
I imagine that the grill technique would be great for Costco sized quantities.
2nd the bacon-in-oven suggestion. I do mine at about 400º for ~18 minutes, but time and temp will vary depending on thickness. Using a rack can reduce the retained fat a little, but gives the bacon a different texture.
Grease fire in the grill is remarkably easy to put out. I’ve done it twice. Keep a jug of water around and if the grill catches fire spray a couple of mouthfuls from the top. Watch for flareups.
It sounds like your kitchen fume hood ventilation could be improved by replacing the constricting roof cap with a silent, wind driven turbine. You could also find a quiet replacement for the noisy fan — clearly designed by the sort who think roaring sounds “powerful” and breathtaking cleaning products smell “clean.”
You know air flow dynamics — in addition to the cap, if the vent outlet is lower than your roof ridge, and if that puts it in the lee for prevailing winds, there would be vortices that interfere with air flow or cause back flow. Add in any large trees upwind for variations.
We resolved a similar situation with a wind turbine atop an extended metal chimney, braced with two guy wires. In summer, with the wood stove flue open, the wind turbine and convection actively vented the house. There must be fans with a comparable “open” setting. Our mountain summers are dry and breezy, but in your more humid maritime area the silent air flow would be welcome.
This first link for wind turbines is in Arlington and the second, in New Zealand, has a larger illustration of the jaunty, Russian cupalo and wind-sculpture look.
http://www.ventmasterinc.com/vent_types.html#wt
http://airflo.co.nz/rotary.htm
Believe it our not: cheap Krusteaz makes the unequivocal best Belgian waffle mix. I use a Waring Pro waffle make, brush with canola oil to avoid sticking, and voila – raves are consisting obtained from el cheapo Krusteaz. A nice topping is fresh strawberries, powdered sugar, and Safeway deluxe strawberry syrup but standard pure maple syrup is always good too.
From my days running a factory that manufactured commercial range hoods: put a properly-sized fan on the roof. Pulling the air works better than pushing it, and it is much quieter. Also, you can open a window a crack to add to the air available to pull out. A good HVAC person can calculate the right size fan based on the amount of air you need to move at peak smokiness.
You are my new hero. We once had to please Stepdad after a power outage and the summer residence by making his biscuits on the outdoor grill. Worked a charm. (http://countingsheep.typepad.com/amuse_bouche/2006/07/nothing_says_su.html). Since the vent hood in Maine is one of those horrendous recirculating models I am going to try this over the summer when I have an army to feed for breakfast.
And since husband, the anal engineer kitted out my serious venthood, I thought I would share with a similar geek. (http://countingsheep.typepad.com/amuse_bouche/2007/05/how_to_hang_a_v.html)
Costco sells pre-cooked bacon that is surprisingly good.
It costs a bit more but not unreasonably more.
(though perhaps it becomes unreasonable in the quantities you required)
After obsessive searching, we (my wife really) found a very small Thermador cooktop that had all the features of a pro range that a householder might like. And it plays well with the pro-look householder fan and hood above it.
We paid a friend who is a restaurant cook to cook a meal once in our kitchen. He grumpily found our stuff met his bare minima. He kept the burners on ALL the time. I kept turning them off to save money until he complained about the mystery person who kept turning off ‘his’ burners. My point? They live in a different world. And pro equipment often isn’t for day trippers. But you knew that.
If you are a kitchen equipment nutter consider a Bimby/Thermomix. It’s a German combo blender/cooker/new best friend that costs a fortune and is sold ala the Kirby vacuum cleaner (to you, in your house). We ate at our son’s friends’ last week and they (she) is a super cook with the requisite Viking, Italian expresso maker and Bimby. The soup she made was quite magical and the machine made it possible, she said. I am a believer. Web surfing suggests it’ll cost $800-$1,600. I couldn’t find any used ones.
I would take a sheet pan (cookie sheet/baking sheet), put a cooling rack on top, lay the bacon on top of that, and then put the pan on the grill to cook the bacon. If you don’t have the cooling rack, don’t worry about it. The bacon will cook in its fat, which is fine, but you’ll want to blot it off when you are finished cooking.