Bacon lovers are split into two camps: those who like their bacon to be more tender, fatty, and chewy, and those who prefer their bacon extra-crispy and crunchy. Lovers of crispy bacon should know that there's a way to make bacon even crispier than ever before: coating the strips in flour before frying them in a pan or in the oven.

Flouring your bacon before frying it borrows from Southern cooking, in which proteins are dredged in a starchy coating that makes them extra tasty and beautifully crispy. A flour coating speeds up the Maillard reaction, the chemical chain reaction that browns foods, creating a flavorful crust on your bacon in addition to the crisp fat.

Flouring your bacon also helps to dry out the meat's surface, protects the exterior of the meat, absorbs excess grease, and helps stiffen the bacon so the slices hold their shape and don't curl, all of which lead to the ultimate crispness. For eaters with gluten sensitivities, you can use sweet rice or rye flour in place of common wheat flour.

Different flours (or even cornstarch) will change the character of the bacon, but all types will give you that sought-after crunch. Also, allowing the flour-dressed bacon to refrigerate overnight between two sheets of parchment paper stiffens the slices even further and removes a few extra steps from whatever meal you're using the bacon for.