How To Make Perfect Bacon In Your Oven
I always make a hot breakfast for my family on the weekends. Most weekdays, we stick to smoothies or a quick bowl of oatmeal but I enjoy having my time in the kitchen on Saturday and Sunday. One of my best breakfast/brunch hacks is oven bacon. Here's how to make perfect bacon in your oven.
Disclaimer: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. What that means in plain English is if you shop from links in this post, the seller pays me a commission. Thanks for supporting our site.
How to make perfect oven bacon
I love bacon. I can’t imagine a world without bacon but I don't love frying bacon or dealing with the grease splatters. The perfect solution is oven bacon.
Ditch your frying pan and make your bacon in the oven. I learned this trick from my brother-in-law. When I saw him making bacon in the oven I wondered why I hadn’t been doing that all along. It saves time and is so much less messy.
About the bacon we use to make perfect oven bacon:
We use COLEMAN NATURAL® Uncured Hickory Smoked Bacon. This bacon came in our Perdue Farms Medium Family Box, Perdue Farms' direct to consumer box available. It's full of delicious foods that will feed your entire family – the bacon is pretty awesome but there's more. You can read more here.
I care about the quality of our food and about where it comes from. Ethical farming practices are becoming increasingly more important to me and I find myself researching companies before I buy their products.
The bacon is made from pork sourced from farms that believe in a crate-free environment, feed animals an all-vegetarian diet and never ever use added growth promotants, hormones or antibiotics. What this bacon doesn't have? Antibiotics or nitrates. What it does have? A whole lot of deliciousness.
Perfect bacon in your oven – how to do it:
Preheat your oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with foil. I usually use two sheets and overlap them in the middle to prevent bacon grease from trickling on to the cookie sheet (leaving me a mess to clean up.)
Lay the bacon on the foil…I know this is really complicated, y'all. We like to make our bacon with fresh ground pepper. If you want to change it up you can sprinkle a little bit of brown sugar on top of the raw bacon for that candied/caramelized finished.
It takes about 30 minutes for crisp bacon. I usually check it at the 20 minute mark. If you like less crispy bacon, I would check it sooner. This gives me time to enjoy my coffee or prepare another part of my breakfast. It's so nice not to have to stand over the stove.
Once the hot grease has cooled I fold the foil up into a little package. If you want to toss it out and put your clean pan back in the cabinet, you can. I put mine in the freezer to use later. Think about it: a neatly little parcel of bacon grease at the ready in your freezer. I use mine in vegetable dishes (adding a little bacon grease and onion to green beans is super yummy) or in place of butter when making grilled cheese sandwiches. There's lots of possibilities.
If you'd like to learn more about Perdue Farms direct to consumer products, click here.
Yes, Jill, this is genius. I have been doing this lately, too. (So yes…I called myself a genius.) It is seriously so good this way and so much less messy. We have done pig bacon and turkey bacon this way – both come out just right. I love it because our big weekend breakfast favorite is Eggs Benedict. That is a bear because you have to pay attention to Hollandaise sauce and poached eggs (even with a poaching pan you gotta time those buggers) and I can’t split my brain yet again to watch bacon. Into the oven it goes.
Now, I also do the double layer of foil on the baking sheet thing, but I need to know more about that little ball of wonder going into the freezer. I will be watching…
OMG! We do this too! However, we set it to 425 and we don’t preheat. We just turn the over on, throw it in and walk away with the timer set to about 25 minutes. I sprinkle a little brown sugar on top and then walk away and come back 25 min later and BAM—SO EFFIN GOOD!!!!!
I will have to try the sugar. Mmm.
We also do this, plus we make bacon lattice this way as well and use on sandwiches. Seriously, I love bacon and the crispy the better!
Me too! My husband teases me that I like “bacos” and not bacon.
I do it this way too, except I don’t bother with the foil. I also save the liquid gold left behind. Yum.
I have tried oven bacon before and it never works out. I am going to try it with your method and if it doesn’t work, I’m coming for you! 😉
Thanks for the tip. I love that the cleanup is so much easier.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE “Oven Bacon” as my mini-me calls it. but we do something a little different and it seems to be done quicker – by minutes, but minutes matter when you have hungry teen boys drooling over the oven…
Instead of preheating, we put the cookie sheet o’bacon in a COLD oven and then turn the temp to 400*. 20 minutes on the timer and we’re done. Sometimes 25 depending on how MUCH bacon I’m making. Love this post.
I am going to have to try this. I love my oven bacon but it seems like it takes FOREVER.
My better half has been done this for about a year and it has changed our life, okay it’s changed breakfast.
One other trick she uses. Rinse the back first in cold water. It keeps it a bit flatter. Still declicious.
“It’s changed our lives…okay, it’s changed breakfast.” That is priceless. I love it.
From http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/breakfastcookery/ht/bacon.htm:
You really want to cook your bacon slowly, and at a low temperature. Too fast or too hot will scorch it, and you’ll end up with bacon that’s crumbly rather than crispy.
So here are the steps. Let me just give you a heads-up here that the most important thing is putting the bacon into a cold oven. Don’t preheat! Starting with a cold oven ensures that the bacon will cook slowly, like it needs to.
Line a baking sheet with foil. This will make cleanup easier later.
Arrange the bacon slices on the foil and place the baking sheet on the center rack of a cold oven. (Try not to stretch the slices out. Just gently drape the bacon across the pan.) Close the oven door. Turn the oven on to 400°F. Walk away.
Come back 17 to 20 minutes later. As soon as the bacon is golden brown, but not excessively crisp, it’s done. The exact time will depend on the thickness of the bacon slices, and also on how quickly your oven reaches the target temperature.
Remove the pan from the oven. Transfer the bacon to another sheet pan lined with paper towels to absorb any excess fat.
REMEMBER: Don’t pre-heat the oven! Make sure the oven is cold when you put the bacon in.
Also, keep your eye on the bacon during the final few minutes of cooking to make sure that it doesn’t burn.
Another thing: Remove the cooked bacon from the hot pan right away. The heat from the pan and the hot bacon fat will continue cooking the bacon.
TIP: You can slightly undercook the bacon, then cool it and freeze it in a zipper bag. Then, to reheat, cook two slices in the microwave on medium power for 30 seconds or so.
Thanks a lot for this great tip, Jill! The worst thing is standing by the stove and later dealing with messy grease cleaning. Yuk. Your tip solves both problems! 😀
Bacon prepared in the oven sounds like a terrific idea! I love to cook in the oven! I find the food made in the oven tastier, too. The only thing that I don’t like is that I have to clean the oven after, but this is what it is! 🙂 Thanks for sharing!