How to Cook Bacon like a Pro

I love to have bacon if I am making a big breakfast, but cooking bacon is a total hassle when you cook it in the pan. First, I can never fit all of the bacon into a single pan in a single layer. This requires me to stack the bacon which leads to uneven cooking times and a lot of effort flipping, turning, and manuvering of the bacon. Second, the bacon splatters like crazy which makes a big mess on my stove. I saw another method of cooking bacon on Good Eats, and trust me cooking bacon in the oven is the best way to cook bacon.

Cooking bacon in the oven frees up precious stove space and a pan when cooking breakfast. That pan can be used for a variety of other things like hash browns, sausages, pancakes, canadian bacon just to name a few. Cooking bacon in the oven requires very little baby sitting. Once it is in the oven, it can safely be left alone for a good 10-15 minutes before you start checking it. It doesn’t splatter and cooks very evenly.

Start with a cold oven.
Place the bacon in a single layer on a sheet pan which may be lined with aluminum foil for easy clean up.
Place the sheet pan in the oven and turn the oven on to 400 degrees.
The fat in the bacon will slowly render out of the meat as it preheats. Once the oven reaches 400 degrees, you need to pay attention to the bacon every few minutes because it goes from perfectly done to burned fairly quickly. I like to turn the bacon once about 5 minutes after the oven reaches 400 degrees because I think it cooks more evenly that way.
Once the bacon has reached desired level of crispiness, remove the bacon from the pan and place on paper towels to drain.

April 7, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Cooking Techniques

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