How to Cook Bacon in the Oven
on Oct 01, 2012, Updated Aug 12, 2024
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Baking bacon is a game changer, and you get perfectly straight pieces in bigger batches every time!
Ladies and gentlemen, are you frustrated by unevenly cooked bacon? Are you embarrassed by bacon curled up into unseemly snarls? Are you tired of skidding around on a skating rink of grease in front of your stove as you suffer the splattering of more boiling oil hopping out of the frying pan? Well, I have good news — you don’t have to suffer anymore. You just need to start baking your bacon!
All you need is a wire rack and a rimmed baking sheet, and you’re ready to make perfectly crisp, evenly cooked strips of bacon in the oven. And you can make a bigger batch of bacon at a time!
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Baked bacon is nice and straight and easy to add to BLTs and a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich. But of course, you can also crumble it and use it in all kinds of recipes, like a Breakfast Burrito, sprinkled into some Egg and Potato Salad with Bacon, or in a salad like Endive, Radicchio, and Citrus Salad with Bacon Vinaigrette.
Table of Contents
How to Cook Bacon in the Oven: Get crisp, perfectly straight pieces of bacon in the oven, and avoid that stovetop splattering.
How to Cook Bacon in the Oven
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Prep the baking sheet: Place a wire cooling rack (the kind you cool cookies on) into a rimmed baking sheet.
- Lay out the bacon: Lay your strips of uncooked bacon in straight rows on the rack; the strips can touch, but they shouldn’t overlap.
- Bake: Bake until it is as crispy as you like it, and drain on paper towels. That’s it! Oven-baked bacon.
How Long to Bake Bacon
The amount of time definitely depends on how thick your bacon is. This works with bacon of any thickness, but you do have to keep an eye on things. Thin bacon will take about 12 minutes in a 350-degree oven, while thick bacon will take about 20 minutes at 350 degrees. It also depends on how crispy you are looking for your bacon to be.
Tips for Baking Bacon
- You can line the baking sheet with foil first if you want to make cleanup a bit easier, though I find that it requires a very concerted effort to seal the foil around the pan so that no bacon grease seeps under. If you have the patience, it will pay off later.
- Check out Candied Bacon for another twist on this!
How to Serve Baked Bacon
Serve your baked bacon up with some perfect scrambled eggs and toast…or use it in a recipe, like one of the ones below. Once I started baking my bacon, I also started making it a lot more. This may be a good thing or a bad thing — only time will tell.
FAQs
There are definitely advantages to both cooking methods. Baking bacon is cleaner: You don’t have to deal with splattering grease, and baking creates neater, flatter bacon strips that you can use easily in sandwiches. With that said, I sure do still love the way cooking bacon in a pan makes your kitchen smell, and you have more control over each piece of bacon when you are flipping it individually.
Both thin and thick-cut bacon work great for baking. Just make sure you add a couple of minutes if you’re working with a thicker bacon.
It depends on how thick your bacon is and how crispy you’d like it. Bacon will take some time between 12 and 20 minutes to bake at 350 degrees — add time for thicker slices and a crispier result.
What to Serve With Baked Bacon
Recipes with Bacon
- Sauteed Kale and Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
- Summer Corn, Tomato and Bacon Salad
- Warm Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Mustard Vinaigrette
- Creamy Blue Cheese and Bacon Coleslaw
- Creamy Corn and Potato Salad with Bacon
- Slivered Wedge Salad with Buttermilk Dressing and Bacon
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How to Bake Bacon
Ingredients
- ½ pound sliced bacon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Place a wire cooling rack inside of a rimmed baking sheet.
- Lay the bacon in a single layer on the wire rack; the pieces can touch, but they shouldn't overlap.
- Bake for 12 to 20 minutes, depending on thickness and desired crispness. Transfer the cooked bacon to a paper towel-lined plate or surface to soak up excess oil and cool slightly.
Notes
- The amount of cooking time definitely depends on how thick your bacon is. This works with bacon of any thickness, but you do have to keep an eye on things. Thin bacon will take about 12 minutes in a 350-degree oven, and thick bacon about 20 minutes at 350. It also depends on how crispy you are looking for your bacon to be.
- You can line the baking sheet with foil first if you want to make cleanup a bit easier, though I find that it requires a very concerted effort to seal the foil around the pan so that no bacon grease seeps under. If you have the patience, it will pay off later.
Game changer, indeed! This method or on the grill is the only way to make bacon, thank you for the tip!
I like to line my pan with foil. so much easier cleanup!
very good point!
This guide bacon baking is good! I wil try it.
Neat trick! Something new for me today. Thanks.