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.
- 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.
Questions & Reviews
Thanks so much! I hate the mess/smell/burnt arms/drama of cooking bacon. I'm going to try this tonight!
thank you for the tip, i love making blt sandwiches but hate the mess,so tonight i think i will give this a try
My all-time favorite way to cook bacon! Not for the mess, but because it doesn't splatter all over my glasses while I'm baby-sitting it. I use my pampered chef stone to do it, and then there's even less grease, and it seasons the stone as you go.
This is a great tip, just curious if the bacon grease makes a mess to the 'oven'????
Thanks!
This is the best post ever! combine it with the this tip if the only other people in your house are (say) cats – bring home the bacon, seperate it into portions, say 4 strips each out of a 16 strip package. Lay the strips side by side on a piece of saran-wrap, then fold the wrap over on itself and the bacon lengthwise until you have a little sealed pack. Wrap the plastic wrapped packs in foil wrap. When you need a little bacon take out the big package, then take out a little plastic wrap of your 4 slices, unwrap those. they will be perfectly stiff separate slices that you can pop onto your foil then into the toaster oven. BLT-ready in a snap.
Everything about this post made me hungry.
I love this! It'll really cut down on mess & dishes in my kitchen! 🙂 Oh and I have to mention, just because it was amazingly delicious when we first tried it, bacon is also really good in pancakes. I know it may not sound like it would be good, but we had bacon pancakes at a breakfast place in San Diego & got hooked!
That is the best tip ever. I've done it twice now. I love how the whole package fits on the sheet (barely), and there's no splattery mess, and no fussing with it. And, it stays flat. Genius.
FYI, Erica– I was just looking at the Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook and she cooks bacon this way for 15-20 minutes, then brushes maple syrup on top and bakes it for another 3-5 minutes.
Thanks for the tip. I always end up doing it by hand on my griddle. Thanks for the time saving tip. I am going to try this Saturday Morning.