13 Tips For Making The Best Oven-Baked Bacon Of Your Life

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If you haven't baked bacon yet, you haven't lived. Okay, that's kind of an exaggeration, but trust us when we say that it rocks. One of the main reasons that bacon tastes so good at a restaurant is because chefs know how foolproof of a cooking method it is. Instead of scorching bacon in a hot pan, leaving it at risk of being improperly cooked, shriveled, and flabby, an oven-baked approach slowly cooks and crisps up bacon slices, rendering away the fat to leave them crunchy and full of deep flavor. Plus, cooking bacon in the oven allows you to make dozens of pieces at once, making it the perfect method for catering for a crowd or batch-cooking.

However, it's not as simple as just putting your bacon in the oven and hoping for the best. Getting the best oven-baked bacon requires a knowledge of how the meat itself is cooking, and a little bit of technique to ensure maximum crispiness. The good news is that none of the methods out there are particularly difficult to master — and we've got all the best ways to get perfect oven-baked bacon right here.

If you want the crispiest oven-baked bacon around, aluminum foil is what you need. Wrapping a baking sheet in aluminum foil before putting your bacon on it can help it cook more evenly and also prevent it from adhering to the pan itself or taking on any baked-on food flavors, which can be a particular risk when it comes to slightly older cooking equipment. Simply grease the aluminum foil that you place on your baking sheet, so that your bacon lifts away easily once you're done. Maximum crispness, minimum effort.

Using aluminum foil is also an excellent option if you don't have the energy to scrub your baking sheet afterward. Once you're finished cooking, you just drain off the fat, and then either throw it in the trash, or wipe clean and recycle. It doesn't matter which side of the foil you use, either. Although some online commentators will tell you that you have to use the shiny side for hot food, the truth is that you can use either side and you'll still get a good result.

Virtually all oven-baked recipes tell us that we have to preheat before putting our food in. Incredibly, that's not true when it comes to bacon. It's actually better to place bacon in the oven when it's cold, and allow it to slowly heat up as your oven does.

The key to getting ultra-crispy bacon is to render out as much fat as possible. For bacon (and for all animal fats), the best way to do this is via temperature control. If you heat up the fat slowly, the grease will leak out, leaving the animal tissue that slowly but surely crisps into perfection. If, conversely, you heat the fat too quickly, it will burn and seize up, leaving you with a chewy result.

Therefore, placing your bacon in the oven when cold and letting it gently heat up will maximize your rendering time, giving it additional color and even more texture. The result? The best bacon you've ever had in your life.

If you wanna make your bacon as crispy as possible, you need to start twisting. Twisting bacon into long cylinders can add to the crunch factor of each slice considerably, while also allowing you to get more pieces of bacon onto your baking sheet. When you roll bacon up, you increase the density of each chew, essentially doubling-up on the amount that your teeth come into contact with every time you take a bite. Plus, rolling up the bacon allows the fat being rendered away to get caught inside each twist, where it then sizzles away, adding even more to its texture.

To twist bacon, though, you'll need something to twist it around. That's where skewers come in handy. Take either a wooden or a metal skewer like this one and wind the bacon around it, before placing it on a metal rack above your baking sheet. If you use a wooden skewer, make sure that you soak it in water before you wrap your bacon up. This will prevent it from burning in the oven — although you'll want to remove any excess water before using it, so that it doesn't moisten your meat.

If you haven't cooked your bacon on a wire rack, you haven't done it right. It might surprise you, but the simple act of elevating your bacon in the oven can give you a much better result. When you put your bacon on a rack, you allow the rendered fat to drip away from it, instead of pooling around the meat itself. Getting rid of this fat and moisture means that it crisps way more, and also results in each bacon slice being less greasy and fatty.

Putting your bacon on a wire rack, like these oven-safe racks, also allows the heat to circulate around it more effectively, which means that flipping it is less essential (although you'll still probably want to, to ensure that it cooks properly on both sides). If you don't have a wire rack to hand, though, never fear: You can just make one. Take a thick piece of aluminum foil and fold it into a fan shape, before spreading it out on your baking sheet like an accordion. This nifty hack will provide the elevation required to get the heat around each bacon slice, and for the fat to drip away nicely. Just make sure the corners of the foil are contained in the baking sheet and not hanging over the side; otherwise, the bacon fat will drip all over your oven.

One rookie mistake people make when cooking bacon in the oven is to start fiddling with the temperature. The school of thought goes that a thick slice of bacon will need a higher heat than a thin one, as it needs to cook into the center more. Well, that's just not the case, guys. In fact, you should keep your temperature at a consistent 400 degrees F, no matter how thick it is.

If you start adjusting your temperature, you'll just undercook or overcook your bacon. Remember, it's not so much the temperature that matters — it's really the amount of time it's in there. If you have thinner cuts of bacon, you should aim for roughly 10 minutes in a hot oven, with a couple extra minutes if you're putting them in as it preheats. For thicker cuts, you may want to aim for closer to 20 minutes. The key is to check the bacon every few minutes or so to ensure that it's not burning.

If you want to cook bacon perfectly every time, you need to think about what you're doing with its fat. As bacon warms up, the fat in it (and there's a lot of it, folks) begins to ooze out and sit around the meat. If you don't get rid of it, it'll stick around — and you don't want that to happen, because if so it just ends up wetting what should be a crunchy, crispy delight. Your bacon ends up soggy, grease-logged, and unpleasantly heavy to eat. Some fat remaining is a good thing, but too much is just unsavory.

The solution is simple: When you're cooking it in the oven, just drain it halfway through. Hold your bacon slices in place, and tip the grease into a bowl on the side. Alternatively, you can blot it away with some paper towels. Doing this gets rid of all the excess grease that you don't want on and around your meat, and leaves your bacon to crisp up properly. If you are draining all that fat, make sure you save it. There are some delicious ways to use bacon grease that you're probably forgetting about.

Who'd have thought that parchment paper could make so much difference? When it comes to cooking bacon in the oven, it's by far the best lining you can use for your baking sheet. This technique, favored by Martha Stewart herself, traps some of the rendered fat around the bacon, which helps it sizzle and crisp even more. You don't have to worry about it sticking, either, as the nonstick nature of parchment paper will allow it to be pulled off easily at the end. Additionally, because it doesn't stick, the heat from the baking sheet itself helps to crisp up the bacon from the underside.

It's worth remembering that if you're going to use parchment paper, it's a good idea to do so with slightly less fatty cuts. While some fat is useful around your bacon, too much of it will make it soggy and get in the way of it crisping up. You'll also want to make sure that you give your parchment paper a little bit of an overhang over the sides of your baking sheet. If it's too small, all of the fat that renders from the bacon will just leak onto the sheet itself, defeating the purpose of using it in the first place.

Sometimes, baking your bacon in the oven just isn't enough. While the oven cooks bacon slices evenly, they can occasionally be left with a lack of color on the outside — and they don't quite develop that charred effect and smoky flavor that pan-fried bacon can get so easily. You can then be left with a choice: Do you continue cooking your bacon in the hope that it'll brown but risk overcooking its interior, or do you just serve it as-is, without any visual flair whatsoever?

You don't have to settle for either if you use your broiler. When your bacon's a few minutes from  being done, flip on the broiler and cook its surface with the direct heat. The higher temperature will give your bacon a nicely browned effect without overcooking its inside. It's important to remember that broiling bacon will continue to cook it throughout, so you do need to do this when it's still slightly underdone. You can also skip the oven entirely and use your broiler to completely cook the bacon, but doing this may not render its fat as effectively.

If you want your bacon to cook properly in the oven, the baking sheet you use is important. Using a flimsy, thin baking sheet may end up ruining your result, as they may warp from the heat in your oven — and can also struggle with heat retention, which you ideally need to cook it on both sides properly. Rather than risk this, opt for a heavy-duty baking sheet, ideally made from stainless steel, such as this one from TeamFar. Stainless steel retains heat well, which will help you avoid any cold spots and will keep your bacon sizzling consistently.

You'll also want to think about the shape of your baking sheet. Avoid using anything that has sides that are too high, as this can trap any moisture being released and could potentially dampen your bacon. Having said this, you'll want a sheet with a fairly substantial rim, as you don't want any fat that's released to leak off and splatter the floor of your oven.

It's worth remembering that not all types of bacon are made equally. Depending on how it is sliced, it will have more or less fat, increased thickness, and more width. All of these factors can affect not only how long your bacon takes to cook, but how well it turns out in the oven. If you're working with pieces that are especially fatty, they can render off too much grease, which can then leave them slicked with oil and unpleasant to eat — and they may also have trouble crisping up.

So, if you want the best oven-baked bacon, we'd always recommend going for a center cut variety. Center cut bacon is sliced from the middle of the pork belly, and as a result it has slightly less fat than other types. It will therefore crisp up more capably, and not leave you with loads of excess grease to deal with. Remember, too, that you can always just trim off some of the fat on your bacon slices if you find that they have a bit too much.

Bacon is an essential component of a killer breakfast, but cooking it can create a lot of mess. While cooking it in the oven on its own can help to avoid grease splatters on your countertops, you're still left with a sheet pan to deal with, and the other pots and pans used to cook your eggs or muffins. Well, what if we told you that there was a way to combine these three foods while keeping mess at a minimum? What's that, your ears are burning? Okay. We'll explain.

Begin by taking a muffin tin, and spray each section lightly with some cooking spray. Take a slice of bacon and wrap it into a circle inside each indentation, leaving a gap in the middle. Then, crack an egg into the center of the bacon slice. Repeat as many times as you like, before seasoning and popping your tin in the oven at 400 degrees F for 10 to 15 minutes. You'll end up with a protein-packed bacon and egg muffin, with the bacon crispy and deeply colored and the egg cooked just right.

Once you've cooked your bacon in the oven, you've still got one more step before you eat it. After you pull your bacon out, take each slice and place it on a piece of paper towel. Doing this helps the excess grease drain off and get mopped up, leaving you both with a less fatty piece of meat and a crispier overall slice.

The reason for doing this is both textural and flavor-based. If you place your bacon onto the plate without first draining it on paper towels, it'll likely be covered in a slick of fat, which can then seep back into the meat and ruin any crispiness you might have gained in the oven. Wicking away the fat can help keep it dry, making the bacon as crunchy as possible. It also stops it from having that somewhat briny, slimy, almost rancid flavor that some bacon can develop when it's drowned in fat. By getting rid of the additional grease, you allow the umami notes of your bacon to shine through in their fullness.

You might think that oven-cooked bacon is enough on its own — and a lot of the time, it is. However, don't we all want our food to be as tasty as possible? That's why we're huge advocates of adding additional flavors and ingredients to our oven-cooked bacon. While you can obviously do this if you're pan-frying it or cooking it another way, the low and slow nature of cooking it in the oven can unlock further taste notes. Sugary ingredients, for example, will gain more caramelization and deeper flavors in the oven than in an ultra-hot pan, where they'll likely scorch.

For a little bit of luxury, try making millionaire's bacon in the oven. Douse your bacon in a combination of brown sugar (or maple syrup), cayenne, red pepper, and black pepper, before popping it in the oven until it's super-crispy. The sweet notes marry with the salty pop from your bacon incredibly well, and the spicy flavors from the other ingredients add further nuance. You can also try combining maple syrup or honey with miso paste and then daubing it onto your bacon, for an extra punch of savoriness. Bear in mind, though, that if you're doing this, you'll likely want to use a lower-sodium bacon.