How To Cook Bacon in the Oven

I’m going to show you something today that just might change your life.  Do you avoid the whole bacon thing because you have to make a big greasy mess, have bacon oil splattered all over the place, and run the risk of scalding your forearms?    Well let me show you a little trick where you can cook bacon and not have a single dirty dish. Really, not one!  It’s so easy that you might just find yourself cooking bacon every day purely for the purpose of snacking on it.  Errr…okay, maybe that’s just me.  Pretend I didn’t say that.

You’re going to need your favorite bacon, a baking sheet, and some aluminum foil.

1. Turn on your oven to 400 degrees F.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.  Use heavy duty if you have it. Lay out bacon slices in a single layer.  They can be close together, just avoid overlap.  You can also lay a metal cooling rack in your pan and lay the bacon on top of that.  Personally I think it tastes way better when it cooks up in its own drippings!

2.  You don’t need to wait for your oven to preheat.  Place pan in the oven for about 12-15 minutes.  Watch bacon after that and cook until desired level of crispiness.   I like  mine on the crispy side so I cook it for about 15-17 minutes.  Cooking time depends on the thickness of the slice as well.

3.  Immediately remove bacon from pan and place on paper towels to soak up grease.

Now you’ve still got that pan full of drippings.  And I promised no mess and no dirty dishes.  Don’t worry, I’m a woman of my word.  Note that at this point, you could save the drippings if that’s your type of thing (and according to the comments it’s quite important to many of you!)  Or…when your bacon has cooled take the paper towels it was draining on and place them right on the baking sheet.  They’ll immediately start soaking up the grease so you don’t accidentally spill on yourself, and this way you don’t have to find something to pour the oily mess into.

Then take the foil and wrap it right up into itself until you have a little package to toss right in the garbage can.

And as long as you didn’t pierce any holes through the foil, your pan is completely clean! Now how easy is that? Plus, you have the best, crispest, flattest bacon, the bacon dreams are made of!

Back to baking.  Baking bacon also results in nice flat pieces.  Flat bacon comes in handy for stuff like Bacon-Pineapple Burgers and Egg Salad BLT’s

I especially love baking bacon when I need a whole bunch to crumble up and sprinkle on stuff like Chicken-Bacon Stuffed Pizza Rolls, Spinach Mandarin Poppyseed Salad, and Bacon & Blue Twice Baked Potatoes. You can be cooking the bacon in the oven while you prep the rest of the food so you don’t have to sit there and babysit a hot skillet.