Baked Bacon

Baked Bacon is, hands down, the BEST way to cook bacon! Once you learn how to cook bacon in the oven, you’ll never go back to a frying pan again!

this recipe

Would you like to cook bacon without having to stand over the pan flipping and rearranging the slices and without all the messy splatters of hot grease? How about super easy clean-up? Yes, you say? Then you need to be bakin’ your bacon!

Bacon is awesome at breakfast, delicious on a sandwich or burger, fabulous on a salad or baked potato, and it’s excellent wrapped around things like scallops, water chestnuts and dates. I’ve even seen it made into jam and ice cream!

As I was baking some bacon over the weekend, I was thinking that maybe some of you haven’t yet tried baked bacon, and I remembered how thrilled I was when I first discovered this method, and so here we are!

Personally, I’ve never like frying bacon. Here’s why:

1. My frying pan never seems to be big enough to hold the amount of bacon I want to cook (I usually cook 8 slices minimum), and the bacon ends up cooking unevenly.
2. You have to babysit the bacon, constantly flipping it and moving it around.
3. Grease splatters all over the stove-top and my shirt (and let’s not forget those nasty sudden pops of hot grease that – BAM! – hit you right on the arm or even in the face).
4. I hate the clean-up.

But all that changed when I started cooking my bacon in the oven!

Now I can cook a bunch of bacon all at once, it all cooks evenly, I don’t have to babysit it, and there are no splatters all over me and my stove top.

And if you’re thinking, “But doesn’t the bacon grease just splatter all over your oven?” Actually, no, it doesn’t! I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t, and the slices stay nice and flat instead of curling up.

And about that clean-up… Once the bacon grease has cooled, just carefully fold up the foil and throw it in the trash. If you cover your pan properly, there should be very little to no grease – most times, I don’t even have to wash the pan!

INGREDIENTS YOU NEED:

• Bacon

HERE’S A QUICK LOOK AT HOW TO MAKE BAKED BACON:

TIPS & TIDBITS:

• The cooking time will depend on the thickness of the bacon and on your oven. The time I suggest is a guideline based on how long it takes when I cook regular (not thick-cut) bacon in my oven at 350°F.
• I cook my bacon at 350°F because it cooks slower and it gives me more control. When you cook the bacon at higher temperatures, the risk of it burning can happen much more quickly.
• Put the bacon in a single layer on the pan and don’t overlap the slices or let them touch because they will stick together.
• You don’t have to line the baking sheet with foil if you don’t want to; the clean-up just won’t be as easy.
• Cook the bacon in the center of the oven for even cooking. If cooking a large amount and using two pans and two racks, I suggest rotating the pans between the racks once during cooking to help the bacon cook more evenly.
• I recommend keeping an eye on the bacon starting at around the 15-minute mark. In those last minutes of cooking, it can go from perfectly cooked to burnt very quickly.
• If you like super crispy bacon, you can place a wire rack in the baking pan and put the bacon on the rack. Personally, I feel the bacon gets plenty crisp without the rack (plus, no messy rack to scrub!).

FREEZING BAKED BACON:

One of the reasons I love this method of cooking bacon is that you can cook a whole lot of bacon all at once and then freeze it. When you reheat it, it tastes just as good as when you cooked it!

To freeze cooked bacon:

• Place the cooled strips of bacon in a single layer without touching on a baking sheet lined with wax paper (or parchment paper). If you’ve cooked a lot of bacon and need more than one layer, put a piece of wax paper between each layer.
• Cover with another piece of wax paper and freeze for 2 hours or so until hardened. This step keeps your bacon from sticking together in the freezer so you can pull out as many individual slices as you want.
• Put the bacon in a freezer bag, carefully remove as much air as possible, and freeze. It’s fragile, so put it in a low-traffic spot in the freezer where it won’t get broken. For best quality, use within 3 months.

When you’re ready to enjoy the bacon, just place it on a plate lined with a paper towel and microwave for several seconds until warm – or you can reheat it on a foil-lined sheet pan in a 325°F oven just until it is warmed through.

Now you can have bacon any time – even when you’re in a hurry!

This is a total game-changer, folks!

I hope you try this recipe for Baked Bacon and love it as much as I do. Thanks for visiting today!

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