A Hands-off Method for Baking Perfect Bacon Every Time!

Bacon is notoriously hard to cook. There's a just-so temperature and just-so cooking time that will get the strips to the just-so crispiness. Too crisp or too chewy, and the bacon is very undesirable. I've gotten it right a few times, but I've also managed to get it wrong more that I'd like to admit.

Last night, I tried a different strategy.

While pulling the bacon out of the freezer, I noticed it had instructions for stovetop, microwave, and oven preparation. Oven? That was new to me. Because I knew the other methods were unreliable,I was willing to give the oven a try. Here's what I did:

Baked Bacon

You will need enough bacon to feed the army that you're feeding for breakfast, as well as a rimmed baking sheet or pan, big enough to lay the strips out without touching. The rimmed baking sheet or pan is critical, as the bacon will produce a good amount of grease while baking in the oven. The sides of the baking container will keep the grease from dripping on to the heating element on the bottom of the oven.

Here's what to do: Preheat the oven to 400. Lay the strips of bacon on the pan such that they aren't touching (They'll stick together!) Bake for 15 minutes. There's no need for turning during cooking. Remove from pan onto plate with paper towels to drain. The pieces will crisp as they cool. It's that easy.

I preferred this method of cooking bacon to pan-frying or microwaving for a number of reasons: It was hands-off. When preparing a "breakfast meal" (which I do for dinner every week or two), the eggs need to be scrambled, the hashbrowns need to be turned, and the bacon needs to be watched closely to get it "just so". I only can do one thing at once, so the multitasking-to-serve-everything-hot is sometimes hard with this meal. The results were consistent. Every piece of bacon was the same crispiness- none had burned or, - worse - had chewy parts. I only have 2 frying pans, so, with hash browns, eggs & bacon all needing one, the timing of the meal is hard to coordinate. I really hate cold eggs. This freed up both my hands and a spot on the stovetop. The 15-minute cooking time was about the same time as it took to prepare the hashbrowns, so everything was served hot. No hot bacon grease to splatter all over the kitchen. (though you do have to be careful not to spill the grease from the sheet or pan while pulling the bacon out of the oven!)

The advantages and ease of cooking bacon this way make it my new method of choice! This is also a good hands-off method when wanting to use bacon as an ingredient in another dish- the rest of the dish can be prepared while the bacon is baking. When it is needed, it will be crisp and ready to crumble! I gotta believe this beats the "bacon bits" sold for salads.