Are You Supposed To Rinse Off Bacon Before Cooking?

The only downside to bacon is the terrible packaging that it comes in — other than that, it's nothing but a win, with bacon having so many great uses. Despite the fact that Americans aren't currently eating enough bacon, the crispy, savory, and meaty pork product goes on or with just about anything you can think of (and the grease is liquid gold). But once you get that blasted packaging open — should you rinse the bacon off in the sink before you cook it?

That would be a huge no, for all the reasons the experts on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website say no one should be rinsing and any raw meat: It can spread bacteria from the pork product all around your sink. That means instead of one infectious touch point (the bacon), you have multiples (the sides of your sink, the bottom, and anything you have in the sink that the bacon water touches). Any bacteria that is present on the meat will, in fact, be cooked off, as long as it's cooked until it's crisp.

Aside from family cooking traditions, where one set of parents modeled rinsing off meat before preparing it, and their children watched and repeated the practice when they were old enough, there are a few other reasons why people think they need to rinse off their bacon before it hits the skillet. The first is that they believe running their raw bacon under cold water will prevent it from shrinking while cooking. In fact, there are two reasons why bacon shrinks: The bacon's fat gets rendered out, and the water that was injected during processing evaporates. Running cold water over your bacon addresses neither of these issues. It just makes your bacon much more likely to splatter grease all over the place once it's in the skillet over heat!

The second false narrative about rinsing bacon is that it will remove some of the sodium from the bacon. Unfortunately, those of you who are on a low sodium diet, running your bacon under water barely removes any sodium; it's not something that rests on top of the meat, it's typically part of the curing liquids that get injected into the meat. Further, rinsing your bacon in the erroneous belief that it will remove sodium may actually remove flavorings and seasonings.