Bakin’ Bacon – Why My Bacon Hasn’t Touched a Frying Pan in 25+ Years

I hate cooking bacon in a frying pan. I lose my patience somewhere between the the curling ends of the bacon and the grease management issues. Restaurant kitchens have the benefit of spacious professional griddles and bacon presses (those bacon weights that control curling). But I have found that baking bacon works even better.

Some 25 or 30 years ago, when I first saw someone bake bacon to crispy perfection, I was in awe – it all made perfect sense. The even heat from the top and bottom of the bacon keeps the strips from curling and the expanse of the baking pan keeps the bacon from swimming in its own grease. My immediate thought was “How come nobody knows about this?” As it turns out, this isn’t a case of hiding your lamp under a bushel.

Hiding in plain sight, typically on the back of any package of bacon you can buy, are straightforward cooking instructions that most people have never read – the instructions typically include variations for stove-top, oven, and microwave. I certainly never thought about reading the cooking instructions for bacon until I saw my friend pull his tray of perfect bacon from the oven like a magician. It never even occurred to me that printed instructions existed.

Read ’em and weep!

Some of the time and temperature details might vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but the approach is always the same: put the bacon in a pan and bake it in a hot oven. It’s that easy!

Here’s how I do it:

I tend to bake my bacon in a very hot oven – 450°F.

Place the bacon in a single layer on a rimmed sheet pan.

I use the lower-middle rack in the oven. Bacon isn’t as sensitive to oven position as, say, cookies. I like the lower-middle rack.

At 450°F, regular bacon takes about 15+ minutes for me. The bacon will just cook itself if left alone, but I like to turn my strips after about 10 minutes – while the bacon is out of the oven, I also pour-off the accumulated grease and rotate the pan.

After 10-ish minutes I remove the pan from the oven to turn the bacon strips over and pour-off the accumulated grease.

I love cooking with bacon grease so, naturally, I save what I pour-off.

After you turn the bacon strips and pour-off the grease, return the bacon to the oven to finish cooking. Keep an eye on it and remove it when it is done to your liking (I prefer crispy bacon so I let it bake until the fat has fully browned).

This is what the bacon looks like after about 17 minutes – definitely crispy.

Transfer the bacon to a towel to absorb excess grease and pour-off the remaining grease from the pan to use later.

The bacon will ALWAYS come out flat and evenly cooked. Perfection.