The Genius Hack That Makes Freezing Bacon Even More Convenient
Sure, there are times when you can devour an entire pack of your favorite bacon in one go, like if you're making breakfast for the whole family or, honestly, if you're just really hungry and really love bacon. However, the rest of the time, you'll need something to do with your leftover bacon after you've opened the packaging and you don't plan on using it right away. According to the USDA, you can expect opened bacon to stay good in the refrigerator for about a week. Better yet, opened bacon can be frozen for up to four months before it begins to deteriorate.
While freezing is obviously your best bet for the tastiest (and safest) bacon for future you, it does come with a problem. If you simply slide your slices of bacon from their package and into a freezer-safe bag, you'll come back several weeks or months later to find them frozen together into a solid rectangle. There's no way to get that puppy unstuck, unless you're willing to wait around for however long it takes to thaw — or so you might've thought. One genius hack may just become your new favorite way to freeze bacon.
Roll up your bacon slices before you freeze them
As America's Test Kitchen showed on TikTok, all you need to do to easily freeze your bacon into neat, individual slices (rather than one giant slab) is to pull apart each strip before freezing them, then roll the strips into individual cylinders. Place the cylinders in neat rows in your freezer bag, then lay the whole thing flat on a freezer shelf. When you're ready to use the bacon, you can pull however many slices you need from the bag, returning the rest to the freezer until needed. There's no more waiting for your bacon to thaw, and there's no being forced to use the entirety of your frozen bacon all at once.
Of course, some commenters on TikTok said they have no issue waiting for their bacon to thaw, nor finishing off the block. As one person put it, "If you ain't eating the whole pack then what are you really doing with your life?" Others, though, point out that you can cook your bacon before freezing it, a similarly easy hack. If you want to go that route, Butcher Box recommends flash-freezing your cooked bacon by lining it up on parchment paper-lined baking trays and freezing the trays for at least a few hours. Then, store the bacon in freezer bags. The flash-freezing prevents the slices from sticking together. The next time you need bacon, you can simply pull your stash from the freezer, heat, and eat.