The only way I cook bacon is in the oven. Cooks without fuss – no turning, no hot oil splatters on hands and cooktop – makes for tidy, flat strips. A pound of bacon cooks itself in the oven while I make french toast or eggs on the stovetop.
Ingredients
- 1 pound bacon (preferably nitrate-free)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Place bacon strips in single layer on jelly roll pan or rimmed baking sheet. Strips can be touching but not overlapping; they will shrink during cooking.
- Cook 15-20 minutes, checking in occasionally. If you find one side is cooking faster than another, turn the pan once during cooking. Cook to desired crispness, watching carefully toward the end.
- Use pancake turner to loosen bacon strips from baking sheet. Place bacon strips on paper towel and dab with another paper towel to absorb excess grease.
Notes
- Don’t dispose of bacon grease (or any fat that is solid at room temperature) in the sink – it will stick in your plumbing and create clogging issues.
- To save the bacon grease for future cooking, let it cool until warm (it will still be liquid but thicker). Pour into a glass dish or jar, where it will cool into a white solid. I am lazy and don’t strain mine – i just stop pouring when it gets to the little browned bits. But to be fastidious you can pour the bacon grease through a mesh strainer or cheesecloth (a paper towel will work in a pinch too, though it will absorb some of the grease). Bacon grease will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator.
- To dispose of bacon grease, let it cool until warm and pour it into a used can from the recycling bin. When it has cooled to a solid you can put it into the trash. You don’t want to put hot oil in the trash, or it will melt a hole in your trash bag.
Here’s a link to the post and pictures.
