proper blt

I’m no stranger to bacon, I think i’ve cooked more bacon than any other food combined, there were times when we were cooking so much bacon we had to start pre cooking boxes and boxes of it on any available heat source before service just to keep up with demand, now this wasn’t in some mega globo restaurant , just a small neighbourhood burger joint ( albeit a very busy one , but none the less small ) then when we had a cafe it was a bacon bonanza - poached eggs, sourdough toast and bacon - pretty much the majority of orders - anytime of the day didn’t matter.

So here’s the thing, people like bacon cooked all sorts of weird ways, also people ( cafes ) routinely fuck up the bacon cooking, literally the simplest food to cook well and taste amazing but fuck it up they do. Absolute worst thing you can do is serve up non crispy bacon.

Start with the bacon - get the one with the fat and rindless no one likes rind on bacon. Obviously the more fancy the better, but if you just want supermarket bacon go for it.

For a proper BLT you’ll need around 4- 5 rashers, start by heating up your frypan , cast iron is good or if you have it a flat top griddle, get it hot, no need for oil.

Once its hot place your bacon on, and leave it alone. when do you flip over i hear you say - you flip when it releases from the pan / griddle without resistance, you need to let the fat render out and lubricate the cooking surface - okay when you flip it over this is when you want to grab a bacon weight, don’t have one ? use a saucepan , just remember to go buy one for next time, you wont need to cook the other side for very long , just long enough to get all crispy - when crispy take you bacon and let it rest on some paper towel.

Next up is the bread, I like sourdough, preferably organic, but use anything you want, we want to toast the bread in some of the bacon fat, but first spread on some butter to get a good fry on. if your bacon fat is a bit on the burnt side, chuck it out, it’s not going taste great - a good idea is to pour off some off the rendered fat as your cooking the bacon to use for later. We are only toasting one side of the bread - two slices one side each.

Okay then, here’s what i do next - use the 2:1 bacon to tomato ratio - for every rasher of bacon you get a slice of tomato, so slice off some tomato, i also add some red onion, just gives it that extra zing and helps cut through the fat of the bacon and butter. On the un toasted side of the bread add some mayo - kewpie or hellemans, don’t use praise or any other shitty mayo and definitely not low fat, spread on both sides. then pile on your bacon followed by the tomato and some onion.

Next controversial choice is lettuce, I tend to go with green oak lettuce, it’s light, not crunchy and looks good - most would go with cos lettuce , but i don’t think it’s a great choice in a sandwich, it can be a bit woody and ends up falling out of the sandwich, covered in mayo straight in your lap, nice. Any way use a fair bit of lettuce in your sandwich. Salt and Pepper is optional.

The last choice you have is whether you cut this bad boy in half or eat it whole. I’m in the don’t ever cut my sandwich in half camp - when i was a kid , maybe 15 or so, i used to go to this milkbar, the old school kind. Any way i’d always get chicken, lettuce, cheese, tomato and beetroot on a white knot roll - everytime never changed - but the problem was there was the one lady that worked at the milkbar who used to cut everything in half, in my mind you never cut a salad roll in half, so it always used to stress me out waiting in line to get my salad roll to see if the lady that called me Darl’ was going to be the one that made my roll that day, god forbid if i ever wanted a sausage roll - sure enough it would get the chop.

Anyway for the sake of inclusiveness in the video below i cut the BLT in half.