What knife and cutting technique should I use for cubing bacon

baconknife-skillsknives

I like to fry and cook cubed bacon for various dishes, but I sometimes have a hard time cutting through bacon, especially where the fat meets the meat. The bacon just tends to move around too much, and it gets trickier at the end of the slice (or chunk). I usually use a 6 inch serrated knife for this task. What knife would be best – serrated, chef's, or filet? Or something else? Is there some special technique I should be using?

Best Answer

Cutting bacon into cubes was a regular prep task for me when I was cooking professionally, so I got very fast at it. Here are the tricks I found:

  • Fully cooked (baked) bacon cuts MUCH faster and cleaner, and you can make perfect cubes
  • Don't use a serrated knife. It'll be easier to cut with, but it will shred and fray the bacon as you slice, eventually making a mess.
  • Use the sharpest knife you have, especially for uncooked bacon. There's already a tendency for it to slip and slide around, and a sharp knife cuts with less back-and-forth motion.
  • You want a deep-bellied knife such as a santoku or Chinese cleaver, because you can slice through multiple stacks of bacon at once.
  • Stack slices of bacon so you can cut multiple pieces at once.
  • Try to work with 4" by 4" blocks of bacon, so the pieces aren't big enough to slip around as much. With this size you're still able to do a lot at once, but it's fast
  • Organize your cutting board. Pick one corner for whole chunks of bacon, then cut into strips and move to another spot, then finally into cubes which goes in another spot.

Now if I were a culinary school, you'd have paid a few hundred bucks to learn what I just told you.

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