Ready to try out a recipe for a perfectly cooked slice of bacon?
Hello there friends! Today, let’s talk about a food near and dear to my heart! Is it cookies or cake, or even ice cream? Nope folks, it’s bacon!
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this food for a while. It’s a food almost the whole family will eat which is a complete win.
Bacon can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And really, it has just the right amount of crispiness and juiciness all mixed in there together.
However to stand by the skillet, flipping the strips and randomly getting splattered by hot bacon grease as it cooks. That’s just not my cup of tea.
So what is the perfect way to cook bacon you might ask? In the oven of course!
Here are four reasons to convince you to convert to oven-baked bacon, as well as instructions on how to make the perfect slice of bacon! Onward, to the kitchen!
Reason #1 – Fix it and Forget it
Oven-cooked bacon is a fix it, and forget it kind of meal!
First, heat your oven to 400 degrees. Place a cooling rack on a cookie sheet and then line the bacon strips up on the cooling rack. Do not overlap them.
I usually place aluminum foil over the cookie sheet before placing the cooling rack on it. This simply helps with clean up after the bacon is done!
Place the sheet in the middle of the oven and set your timer.
Reason #2 – No Grease Splatters
Friends, that’s about it! Fifteen to twenty minutes later your bacon is cooked to perfection!
No standing there at the stove flipping the bacon, and dodging spits of grease! All the grease just falls through the cooling rack and into the cookie sheet!
If just that reason alone doesn’t make you a convert, tell me your secret! I used to change into an old shirt before cooking bacon in a skillet to avoid ruining one because of the grease!
Reason #3 – Evenly Cooked Bacon
Your bacon strips cook evenly every stinkin’ time! Does it bother anyone else that when you fry bacon in a skillet the center strips cook evenly.
However, the ones on the outer skillet area are partly curled up and that bacon just can’t cook evenly! Even when you rotate the strips from the edges to the center, I just couldn’t get it to turn out perfectly.
This way, every strip is exposed to the same amount of heat giving you evenly cooked bacon. Every slice!
Reason #4 – Bake a Bunch of Bacon at Once
Ok, so the last reason is that making oven-cooked bacon allows you to make a bunch at once!
Depending on the skillet size, it seemed like it took FOR-EV-ER (think Sandlot movie quote) to cook a whole package of bacon on the stovetop!
I only have one cooling rack so it does take two rounds to cook the whole package, however, if you had two you could make the whole package in about fifteen to twenty minutes! Super Awesome!
Here is the cooling rack and sheet pan I use. Both work well. I found them on Amazon!
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Product List for Oven-Baked Bacon
Final Tips on How to Make Oven Baked Bacon
The first few batches that you make you will have to do a trial run with your oven. Preheat to 400 degrees and put the bacon on the center rack.
The first round, I have a full cooling rack of bacon slices. I usually set the timer for 15 minutes and then check on the bacon to see if it needs a few extra minutes.
If you’re only cooking one package the second cooling rack load doesn’t contain as many slices, so I usually set the timer for about 12 minutes and then check on the bacon.
The perfect time needed basically comes down to how you like your bacon, crispy vs chewy.
How hot your oven runs also plays a factor. So experiment until you find the best formula for how to make the perfect slice of oven-baked bacon!
Questions and comments please post below! Thanks for reading!!
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