Cooked Bacon Weight

[Corinne]

Have any of you ever cooked a pound of bacon & then weighed it afterwards? I cooked 3 lbs of bacon tonight: ends & pieces, not strips of bacon. After it cooked I weighed it because I need 1 lb. of bacon for this recipe & 1/2 lb for that recipe. I was pretty shocked - from 3 lbs (48 ozs) it went down to 12 ounces after it was cooked & all the grease was drained off. Is my scale off? Would bacon strips weigh in differently?

 

[amber]

Sadly, bacon in the U.S. is mostly fat. You said you cooked ends and pieces, not strips, so I guess that may have accounted for the lesser amount of final weight? I've never actually heard of a recipe calling for "cooked" bacon, usually just specificies an amount which is assume uncooked to start with. Can you post your recipe?

 

[Katie H]

Yes, Corinne, bacon pieces would weigh in differently. They're usually the off cuts and waste cuts from good bacon. I usually just buy inexpensive (kind of a dumb term) bacon and cook it up for recipes that call for chopped or cooked bacon. I save the good stuff for breakfast.

 

[TATTRAT]

The end yield is certainly going to be off. as stated, the fat is rendered, there goes some wieght. The leaner, the less rendering of fat, and vice versa.

But hey, it's bacon, gotta love it!

 

[Gretchen]

Sadly, bacon in the U.S. is mostly fat. You said you cooked ends and pieces, not strips, so I guess that may have accounted for the lesser amount of final weight? I've never actually heard of a recipe calling for "cooked" bacon, usually just specificies an amount which is assume uncooked to start with. Can you post your recipe?

Bacon is fat, a bit of lean meat, and also water used for the curing process in most commercial bacon. And yes, it is all absent when the final delicious product is fried out and we are left with crispy fat with a bit of cooked meat.

Ends and pieces are just the same as the slab of bacon, just not as attractive and usually fattier. They could cook out to be just fine to use chopped up in a salad or something.
A recipe might refer to using "4 slices of bacon, cooked", or it might refer to "4oz. bacon, cooked and crumbled". But it would not expect these to weigh the same as the raw bacon. I don't know if the original poster is trying to interpret a recipe as in these examples or is just amazed at the amount of fat there is in bacon.

 

[Corinne]

I guess I didn't explain myself very well. I cooked off 3 lbs of chopped bacon to use in recipes that call for cooked & crumbled bacon & I sometimes use the "ends & pieces" for that kind of thing.

I cooked the entire 3 lbs. of bacon at one time - to be divided among different recipes over the next few days. I figured that if I weighed the bacon after it was cooked, I would be able to figure out much to use for each recipe. I was really surprised that the weight went down so much. 1 lb of uncooked bacon equaled 4 ozs of cooked bacon.

Once I knew that, I knew that if the recipe called for 1 lb of bacon, I would need to use 4 ozs of the cooked stuff. Does that make any better sense?

 

[Andy M.]

I guess I didn't explain myself very well. I cooked off 3 lbs of chopped bacon to use in recipes that call for cooked & crumbled bacon & I sometimes use the "ends & pieces" for that kind of thing.

I cooked the entire 3 lbs. of bacon at one time - to be divided among different recipes over the next few days. I figured that if I weighed the bacon after it was cooked, I would be able to figure out much to use for each recipe. I was really surprised that the weight went down so much. 1 lb of uncooked bacon equaled 4 ozs of cooked bacon.

Once I knew that, I knew that if the recipe called for 1 lb of bacon, I would need to use 4 ozs of the cooked stuff. Does that make any better sense?

Makes perfect sense. That's what I would have done.