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
What a great way to cook bacon without all that crazy grease to clean up. Can’t wait to try it!
I have cooked bacon like this for years-love it. Here’s the problem- I have never ended with a clean pan! One thing that I haven’t done before is use the paper towels to soak up extra grease, so I tried that with such high hopes. Sad to say after soaking, cooling, extra… I lifted up the foil and dang! -still greasy? I overlap the foil layers a lot and make sure it wraps up over the edges, I don’t poke holes- what am I missing????
Karen, definitely use heavy duty foil. It’s thick and large enough that you won’t have to worry about overlapping (grease ALWAYS makes its way through when I do that!) Works every time 😉
Tried this morning. Loved it! Cooked evenly and little mess.
Bacon!So good that it’s even good on a salad! A salad!!!!!
OK, I tried this tonight with thick peppered bacon. It really worked! The bacon was GREAT! Your clean-up idea was just as easy as 1-2-3. Thanks for such a GOOD idea. Love to you. From, L
Okay, I love this for so many reasons! One inparticular is I hate when I’m trying to make something, and I am running out of skillets, or even room on the stove top. This is perfect! I can’t believe I haven’t been doing this all along! Thanks!
Just tried it. Worked like a charm. I am NEVER going back to the skillet for cooking bacon. Have I told you lately how awesome you are? Awesome. Totally. Hope you are enjoying Hawaii.
I use this all the time. I love not having to clean up the bacon grease spattered all over my stove, and that I can set the timer and walk away. My husband has seen me make it like this many times, recently he went to a Men’s Breakfast at our church. He ended up helping cook the bacon, and he cooked it like this. All of the men were raving about how good it was and some of them even came up to me telling me how great it was. Thanks so much! I tell people about your blog all the time!
I tried this for brunch this morning and my husband was hovering over me asking if I was sure it was going to work. He is used to microwaved bacon which I am trying to get away from. He was nervous that it wouldn’t get crispy. When he and my son ate it they said it was the best bacon they had ever tasted. I told them that Sara and Kate could be trusted. Unlike some of the other sketchy recipes or methods I have tried from the internet. Thanks ladies!
I think this post just changed my life. I love bacon, but I hate cooking it. I never cook bacon, if we ever have any my husband cooks it. I also like crunchy bacon, which is really hard to do on a skillet because it burns so easily. But putting it in the oven, and not even having to wait for it to preheat? That’s just too easy. Thank you!