Bacon Press

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A Bacon Press is a heavy, flat weight used to stop bacon from curling when frying.

Bacon Presses can also be used:

  • to flatten grilled sandwiches, hamburger patties, sausage patties, French toast, and quesadillas;
  • to flatten boneless meats when grilling or frying them such as ham or pork chops;
  • as a weight to press out whey when making cheese or thick yoghurt;
  • as a weight to press out unwanted fat from hamburger patties;
  • as a weight to press down hash brown patties to get them crispy.
You put the Bacon Press on top of the bacon strips and leave it there while the food is cooking. It causes the cooked bacon to come out as perfectly flat, straight strips. It also reduces splatter from the bacon, and causes the bacon to cook somewhat faster.

A few are made of glass, so you can see how the bacon is progressing through them. These glass ones tend to be about 8 to 10 inches (20 to 25 cm) square by about 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) thick.

Most Bacon Presses, though, are made of metal, either aluminum or most usually, cast iron.

Some metal ones will be lighter than others; depending on the weight, some might be too light to be used as a sandwich press. The cast iron ones will weigh about 2 1/2 pounds (around 1 kg) in total.

Metal ones are usually rectangular, about 8 inches (20 cm) long by 4 inches (10 cm) wide. Some people say that the 4 inch wide ones aren't even wide enough for 4 strips of bacon, are certainly not useful for cooking for more than one person at a time, and that they aren't wide enough to be used as a sandwich press. To solve this problem, you may find you need two of these rectangular presses, if your pan will accommodate them (if you are cooking on a griddle, you'll be fine with two side by side.) Note that some Bacon Presses may be only 6 or 7 inches (15 to 17 cm) long; you may find these sizes aren't long enough for strips of bacon.

If you do your cooking in round frying pans, and cook for more than one person at a time, the round metal ones may serve you better. These will be about 7 to 9 inches (23 cm) wide, meant to basically cover the whole bottom of a frying pan. Note that in frying pans, the size of the frying pan is measured at the top, not the bottom -- so measure the bottom of your frying pan to ensure the round Bacon Press you are looking at will actually fit. Note as well that a few round presses seem to come with a decorative 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) trim around them, making them in effect 1/2 inch (1 cm) wider than advertised.

Whether glass of metal, Bacon Presses will have a wooden handle or knob, or a metal coil handle on top, that won't heat up. In prolonged cooking, though, the metal coil handles can heat up enough that you may want to use an oven mit with them.

Most metal ones come unassembled, requiring you to put them together. Sadly, none seem to come with folding handles for easier storage.

Bacon Presses are also useful on outdoor grills; in fact, people often switch to calling them "Grill Presses" when they walk them out the back patio door. The presses help food items such as chicken pieces, pork chops and hamburger patties to cook faster, while pressing out any unwanted fat, and preventing curling. Because they are pressing the food down onto the grill, you also get the nice grill lines in food more easily. (In fact, some "Grill Presses" come with ridge lines in them -- but cleanup can be harder.) If you are planning to use a press for outdoor grills, you will almost certainly need several or you'll find yourself playing musical chairs with one.

Before purchasing, check out the bottom. Some have fancy decorative grooving in the bottom; others have screw heads that come through to the bottom into indentations. Experience Bacon Press hands say that both traits can make clean-up harder.

Cooking Tips for Bacon Press

Items such as pork chops often have their edges curl up on you during cooking. This means you have to cook the inside areas longer than you might want to, in order to get the curled up edges cooked, thus drying out the inside areas. A Bacon Press helps prevent this. (Mind you, for pork chops, slits in the outside edges usually does the trick, as well.)


You will find that you'll need to reduce your cooking times, as food items will cook more quickly with a Bacon Press on top of them. In an age of rising cooking fuel costs, this is an added bonus.

Some people note that if you use a press on hamburger patties, you might not only press "unwanted" fat out of them, but also all the juices, leaving you with dried up patties.

Pros suggest that if you have a cast-iron Bacon Press, whether using it on a grill outside or griddle inside, you may wish to heat it up first for a few minutes if there's time. If fully heated, they say, you may find you don't even need to flip the food or sandwiches.

Some say that there's a catch in using a Bacon Press with cheaper bacon that has had its water cure injected, as most is nowadays: as the water escapes from the bacon it gets trapped under the Bacon Press, boiling and steaming the bacon instead of frying it.

Substitutes for Bacon Press

Tin-foil covered brick.
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