Bacon is slow cooked in it's own juices, delivering a ton of flavor and a silky smooth tenderness, before quickly searing it in a pan. Take your bacon to the next level with super easy Sous Vide Bacon with this easy to follow recipe.
🥓 Ingredients
- 1 lb thick cut bacon. You'll get the best results from thick cut, which will give you a nice contrast between silky-tender bacon from teh slow cook and a crisp surface for the sear.
That's it! If you want to make it into a perfect BLT, add in:
- 8 slices bread. I used a fresh homemade white bread for this recipe, but a nice rye bread or wheat bread offers a nice full bite, as well.
- 2 Tbsp fresh basil, sliced in thin ribbons. The fresher, the better here. We mix it into the mayo for an awesome bit of freshness against the fat and avocado and a acid of the tomato.
- ½ cup mayonnaise. High quality, real stuff here.
- 1 avocado, sliced or cut into cubes. This both adds more substance to the sandwich, and gives a bit of smoothness to help marry the rest of the flavors together.
- 1 large tomato. I cut mine pretty thick and season it with salt and pepper.
- 4 leaves iceberg lettuce. You can always sub other greens, like spinach, or romaine lettuce, but for me, iceberg lettuce was made for sandwiches like the BLT.
🔪 Instructions
Step 1
Preheat Sous Vide water bath to 145° and cover container with lid. Meanwhile, add bacon to vacuum sealer bags (affiliate). Vacuum out as much air as possible and seal tightly. Add to water bath and let cook for 24 hours.
Tip: Drape the end of the bag over the edge of the container and close the lid over it. This will help hold the bacon away from the opening to your sous vide water circulator (affiliate). Also, periodically check the water level in a longer cook like this and add more if needed.
Step 2
Heat a over medium-high heat. Remove bacon from water bath. Open bag and separate bacon slices. Pat each bacon slice dry, then add to pan. Do not overcrowd the pan, cooking your bacon in batches if necessary.
Cook bacon for 2 minutes on the first side, then flip over and and cook for 1 minute on opposite side. Remove to a plate lined with paper towel to soak up excess fat.
Optional - Make a BLT!
Mix together thinly sliced fresh basil and mayonnaise. Spread on the top slice of lightly toasted wheat or rye bread. On the opposite side, spread sliced avocado and season with salt and pepper.
Lay on top a thick slice of tomato. Add 2 strips of bacon, which have been cut in half, then a slice of iceberg lettuce. Add the top slice of bread, mayo side down and press together lightly. Cut down the center and enjoy!
🎥 Video
🌡Temperature
With a sous vide circulator, we're able to get super precise with temperature. For sous vide bacon, we're going to set our water circulator at 145°. The bacon will then cook to exactly that temperature, but not a degree over.
⏲ Time
I recommend cooking your bacon for 24 hours. So, if you're going to serve it for breakfast on Sunday, start it Saturday morning. At minimum, you'll want to cook this 8 hours. At max, you can push this as much as 8 days, but I wouldn't recommend cooking it for longer than 48 hours.
❔ What is Sous Vide Bacon?
For quite awhile, Sous Vide cooking was a secret of the restaurant world. But over the past few years, this easy to master technique has made it way into everyday home kitchens.
Quite literally, “sous vide” in French translates to “under vacuum”. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. Bacon placed in an air tight vacuum-sealed bag. Then, it’s cooked “under vacuum” in a water bath that’s precisely temperature controlled for 24 hours, before finishing it quickly in a pan.
👉 Why you'll love it
When we're cooking bacon in a pan, we're quickly bringing it up to temperature over high heat and melting the fat away. But with Sous Vide, we bring the bacon only to the precise temperature we want it to cook to, tend slowly let it tenderize in it's own fat.
The result is an almost confit like tenderness while permeating every bit of the bacon with all the flavor. This is bacon taken to the next lever.
🥪 Serving Suggestions
While this is great on simply pan fried and served alongside eggs and potatoes for breakfast, my favorite way to enjoy sous vide bacon is on a BLT.
To make the best BLT, I start with a good wheat or rye bread, lightly toasted. I mix together chopped fresh basil and mayo and slather it on the top side of the bread. On the bottom half, I smear some chopped avocado and lay on a thick slice of tomato. From there, I stack about 3 slices of bacon, cut in half, then a piece of iceberg lettuce on top. Serve it immediately and enjoy!
💭 Top Tips
- Buying tip: Opt for thick cut bacon in this. The texture at the end will give you a perfect mix of crisp on the outside and supremely tender in the meat of the bacon. It's really the best of both worlds.
- Cooking Tip: The water from the sous vide will slowly evaporate, as hot water often does. So, make sure to start with enough water to completely cover the bacon and some to spare. To help prevent evaporation, use a sous vide container with a lid to help trap in the moisture.
If you don't have a lid, simply plan on checking your sous vide every so often, especially making sure it has enough water before you go to bed. - What if I don't have a vacuum sealer? You can make this work using a ziploc bag using the water displacement method. Go slowly and make sure to get as much air out as possible.
- Double Seal: When using a vacuum sealer, I always add a second seal about an inch under the first seal. This just adds an extra layer of security in case one of the seals opens at all during the cook.
👨🏻🍳 Mike's Recipe Rundown
- Taste: I mean, this is bacon to the next level. By slowly cooking the bacon to a precise temperature, the bacon flavor really soaks into every little bit of these little strips of heaven. I like a nice, smokey bacon that really enhances the depth of everything as well.
- Texture: The thick cut bacon is seared to be just crisp on the outside, while the inside is cooked to an almost butter like tenderness.
- Difficulty - Super Easy! Don't be intimidated by a 24 hour cook, there's very little for you to actually do here. Simply drop the bacon in the bag, seal it up and let the sous vide bath work it's magic until it's time to eat. Then a quick sear in a frying pan (affiliate) and it's eating time!
- Pros: Simply put, this is the best bacon I've ever had. Slowly cooked, super flavorful, but still crisp at the end? This is the best way to make bacon for breakfast or for BLTs.
- Cons: As with any 24-hour cook, this takes some planning ahead. Even with a minimum 8-hour cook , you need to make your mind up the day before you want to eat in order to get everything rolling in time. This isn't something you can wake up and have ready for breakfast.
🍽 Equipment
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🥘 Related Recipes
- Sous Vide Steak
- Sous Vide Chuck Roast
- Sous Vide Pork Chops
- Sous Vide Chicken Thighs
- Sous Vide Pork Tenderloin
- Sous Vide Lamb Couscous
- Sous Vide Duck Breast
- Prime Rib French Dips
Sous Vide Bacon
- Total Time: 24.5 hours
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
Ingredients
- 1 pound bacon
Instructions
- Preheat Sous Vide water bath to 145° and cover container with lid. Meanwhile, add bacon to vacuum sealer bags (affiliate). Vacuum out as much air as possible and seal tightly.
- Add to water bath and let cook for 24 hours. Drape the end of the bag over the edge of the container and close the lid over it. This will help hold the bacon away from the opening to your sous vide water circulator (affiliate). Also, periodically check the water level in a longer cook like this and add more if needed.
- Heat a frying pan (affiliate) over medium-high heat. Remove bacon from water bath. Open bag and separate bacon slices. Pat each bacon slice dry, then add to pan. Do not overcrowd the pan, cooking your bacon in batches if necessary. Cook bacon for 2 minutes on the first side, then flip over and and cook for 1 minute on opposite side.
- Remove to a plate lined with paper towel to soak up excess fat.
Notes
Optional - Make a BLT! Mix together thinly sliced fresh basil and mayonnaise. Spread on the top slice of lightly toasted wheat or rye bread. On the opposite side, spread sliced avocado and season with salt and pepper. Lay on top a thick slice of tomato. Add 2 strips of bacon, which have been cut in half, then a slice of iceberg lettuce. Add the top slice of bread, mayo side down and press together lightly. Cut down the center and enjoy!
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 24 hours
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Sous Vide
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: Sous Vide Bacon, Bacon Recipes, Sous Vide BLT
