Makin Bacon, as-seen-on-TV cooking system, proves successful

Bacon goes with pretty much everything. Eat it by itself, put it on a burger, chop it up and put it on a salad — the options are endless.

Everybody loves a little bacon and most everybody has some sort of memory associated with bacon. For me, it was waking up to my grandpa cooking bacon in the backyard fire pit after all the grandkids camped out in the backyard for our family reunion every summer.

As I’ve gotten older, however, the closest thing I’ve gotten for real bacon is pre-cooked microwave bacon. Although the pre-cooked stuff is good, it’s just not the same. Then, I stumbled upon “Makin Bacon.” This product allows you to cook bacon in the microwave and supposedly makes the bacon healthier. Healthy bacon? Sounds gross and preposterous. But I decided to give it a try.

Makin Bacon was invented by eight-year-old Abbey Fleck in 1993, and she received a patent for the device three years later in 1996. The Makin Bacon device is a simple, quick, easy way to cook bacon, and it claims to make bacon healthier by draining the fat into the bin below where the bacon cooks.

To use Makin Bacon, you first attach the T-shaped drip bars in the slots of the Makin Bacon dish. One bar holds up to six strips of bacon, and the entire contraption can cook up to 18 strips of bacon at a time. The instructions say to place a paper towel over the bacon strips to cover the inevitable grease splatter, and to cook the bacon for 1-1 ½ minutes per strip of bacon. Then when the bacon is finished, you can just pour the fat away.

So, I went to work on making my bacon. I set up the Makin Bacon dish and placed the drip bar into the slots. I placed six strips of bacon onto the bar, placed a paper towel over the bacon. I put the contraption into my microwave, and set the timer for seven minutes and 30 seconds.

Boy, was that a mistake. By the time the timer had 30 seconds left, I could smell the bacon burning. I quickly stopped the microwave, and sure enough I was right. Burnt to the crisp, you could use the bacon as a hammer — it was just that burnt. I had to leave the bacon in my microwave for a good 10 minutes to let the smoke clear so I didn’t set off the fire alarms.

Because my first attempt was an absolute failure, I decided to try it again. I cleaned up the burnt mess, and this time I only used four strips of bacon. I had to use my floor’s microwave this time, because the smell of burnt bacon was so bad in my room I had to let it air out for a while before reentering.

I placed the four pieces of bacon with a paper towel to cover in the microwave and this time I set it for three minutes and 30 seconds. This time when the timer went off, it actually smelt like bacon and not a pathetic attempt at it. I took the dish out and let it cool for about a minute, and tried it out, and it was some good bacon.

Now, I’m one of those people who doesn’t like their bacon really crispy, and this bacon was exactly how I liked it. Just the perfect amount of crisp. However, I did still get a lot of the grease that was on the bacon, even though most of it had dripped down into the bin. I wanted a second opinion, so I went down the hall to a friend’s room and asked her to try some. She was really skeptical at first and thought I had done something to it, but eventually she tasted a piece. She too thought the bacon was good, and still had the amount of grease that regular bacon did.

After it was all said and done, I genuinely loved this product. Although there was a hiccup with the first trial, which was mainly a user error, I would absolutely use it again, and even recommend it to someone. The bacon took me back to when I was a kid getting it right off the fire from Grandpa. Although it does advertise that it drains the fat from the bacon, it was still there after cooking, however this is a minor detail and to be honest I didn’t mind it all because bacon without grease is like a s’more without graham crackers — it’s just not the same.