Perfectly Even Cooked Bacon Every Time: The oven heat circulates around the strips of bacon, cooking them evenly every single time. Less Mess – No Mess: Easy cleanup is always a big plus for me. Fried bacon splatters extra grease on your stove, kitchen counters – and even on you!
Cooking bacon in the oven gives you perfectly crispy slices without any flipping or fussing, and the cleanup is superspeedy. It's also the best way to make bacon for a crowd. You can cook the bacon directly on aluminum foil-lined baking sheets or on a wire rack set on top of the baking sheets.
So if you're feeding a crowd, you want to heat up your oven instead. Baking your bacon on a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet allows the rendered fat to drip away from the bacon, helping it cook up even crunchier than pan-frying.
They cook it the best way possible, on a sheet pan in the oven. The bonus is while it takes longer to make this way, you can make more at once, the pieces are more or less flat and they come out crispy. Or they throw it in the deep fryer once it's done.
In the Delish test kitchen, we love the oven method. Baking at 400° for 20 minutes is a reliable and easy technique that yields crispy strips every time.
Montaño recommends cooking your bacon over medium heat in a pan with a lot of surface area. “Don't crowd the pan,” she says. "Drain the fat off as it renders into a heat resistant dish. This serves two purposes: a dry pan will crisp the bacon and you will have bacon fat for future projects.”
The secret is pre-cooking your bacon
According to Epicurious, par-cooking it in the oven is the preferred method of many restaurant owners. Once it's cooked, they layer the bacon slices on paper towels to absorb the fat and refrigerate.
The trick is something you'd expect to find in a French restaurant: He confits it. Yes, Koutsouris covers four pounds bacon with oil (yes, oil), and then broils it for about 20 minutes, until it's halfway cooked. The end result is a limp, jiggly heap of bacon that you can fry to crispness in just 2 minutes flat.
Oven baked bacon has less fat than fried bacon, which means fewer calories but still tastes just as good. If this is you're first time cooking bacon in the oven, you will fall in love with this method! Once you see how easy it is to do, you'll be convinced and probably never pan fry bacon again!
Then, both the fat and the meat cook and crisp at the same time, resulting in the wonderful balance of a perfect piece of bacon. Baking does just this; by placing a cold pan into the oven, the bacon has a gentle start into its roasting journey (simulating the simmering method).
Good news! Bacon tastes the same whether it's fried or baked. And surprising news; baking bacon is the best way to prepare it for health reasons and appease your taste buds. Using an oven or an air-fryer actually makes it easier to cook the bacon uniformly.
Why Does Cooking Bacon in Water Work? The addition of water keeps the initial cooking temperature low and gentle, so the meat retains its moisture and stays tender as the fat renders. Plus, since the water helps render the fat, there will be significantly less splatter as your bacon finishes in the pan.
The Classic Method: In a Skillet
At room temperature, bacon just cooks up better (just like steak). 2: Don't preheat the skillet. Lay out the bacon strips without overlapping in a cold pan. This helps the fat render slowly, for consistently cooked strips.
Give it a quick rinse, then bake it
Rinsing with cold water removes a little bit of the fat from the bacon, which can help reduce shrinkage. However, Life Hacker notes that the cold-water-rinse is less important than baking it in the oven and that rinsing bacon can often lead to lessening its flavor.
Three types exist — slab, regular, and center cut. Meat lovers should opt for the latter since it's the lowest in fat, containing up to 30% less than a normal slice. Derived from a part of the pork belly near the bone, it imparts more pork flavor without losing that irresistible bacon quality.
The size of the air fryer basket will determine how many rashers you can cook at one time. Set the air fryer to 200C and cook streaky bacon rashers for 6-10 mins – just-cooked bacon will take 6 mins, but crispier bacon will take 9-10 mins. Cook back bacon rashers for 4-8 mins, depending on your preference.
If you want to cook crispy bacon in oven, the main trick to the recipe is to use an oven-safe cooling rack — instead of placing the bacon directly on the sheet pan. This means it doesn't sit in the grease as it cooks and the fat drips down, which gets you that perfect crispness.
The biggest obstacle to frying bacon is the relationship between heat and fat. If you cook it low and slow for too long, too much fat may render off, resulting in tough, jerky-like strips. If you fry too fast, the fat may seize up and get gristly, or worse, the strips could burn.