How to Cook Bacon, No Splatters, No Shrinking

If you've eaten at restaurants or gone to buffets and seen the beautiful bacon strips, you might have wondered how theirs looks so great. Restaurants must get bigger bacon, right? They get the same size bacon as everyone else, but there's a trick to making bacon keep it's shape and size.

Have a look at the photos to see the before and after shots of the bacon, then try this yourself next time you're ready for bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, chopped bacon for salads and omelets, or regular slices to go with your breakfast.

What you need

The largest baking pan you have
aluminum foil
bacon

What to do

If you have huge aluminum foil, you'll only need one sheet to cover your big pan. If not, you want to put two pieces together in a way that the bacon grease won't leak out the overlapped part. Tear off two equal lengths of foil, enough to cover your baking pan end to end. With backs of the foil together, fold over about 1/2 inch. Fold that over again and press the foil flat. You can do it a third time just to be safe, if you have enough foil.

Open the foil sheets and place on the baking sheet, pressing the seam flat and making sure the foil is pressed into the corners to keep any bacon fat from going off the foil and onto the bottom of your oven.

Open the package of bacon and separate the strips, placing them side by side on the foil. You can overlap them slightly or have them edge to edge, it won't make much difference.

Bakin' bacon

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Place the prepared sheet of bacon on the middle shelf.

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, depending on the crispness desired.

If you are going to use the bacon later and will be reheating it, undercook it slightly so when reheated it will be just the way you like it.

Remove the bacon from the foil immediately after you take it from the oven. Drain the bacon on absorbent paper towels to remove excess bacon fat.

For those who use the bacon fat, it's easy to pour off the baking sheet and into a container. If you don't want to keep it, wait til it cools and hardens. Fold the aluminum foil carefully to create a leak-proof package and it's ready for the trash bin. Your baking sheet should be absolutely clean and ready to put away.

Makin' bacon ahead of time

If you're expecting guests and don't want the house to smell like bacon, you can prepare it in advance. Bacon pre-cooked in the oven freezes beautifully!

On a paper towel, arrange your bacon in layers, with a piece of paper towel between layers. Wrap the excess towel around the bacon to protect it and put the bundle in a ziplock bag. Pop it in the freezer and it will keep for months, but it's not likely to last that long.

You can put frozen pre-cooked strips of bacon directly into the frying pan to reheat and crisp. It only takes a minute and there's almost no mess from grease. You can put pre-cooked bacon in the microwave for 15-30 seconds, too, depending on your microwave's power.

Need bacon bits for salads omelets or carbonara sauce? Pull out a few frozen pre-cooked bacon strips, chop them up, and they're ready to use.

Getting rid of the lingering bacon smell

The reason I make a couple pounds of bacon at a time is because it's very convenient and I don't have the smell of bacon in my house every time I use it in my cooking. Needless to say, when I was finished baking two pounds of bacon, every room in my house smelled like bacon. It's a nice smell, but not something I can stand for the entire day. I went to Crystal Ray's article entitled "How to Get Rid of Fried Food smells in a House" and within half an hour my house smelled like I'd been baking cookies, not bacon.

Source:
Personal Experience