How to Bake Bacon

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Who doesn't love bacon? We love bacon in this house! This How to Bake Bacon tutorial will leave you never wanting to stand in front of a frying pan, dodging flying bacon grease ever again!

Learning to bake bacon was a huge deal for me! I cook for 6, so frying bacon was a hassle for me, because it was never done all at once. I had to do it in batches and afterwards I had a huge mess of grease to clean up. Then, by mistake we tried the pre-cooked bacon that you can reheat in the microwave. Gross! Never again! I apologize if you like it, we do not! Thankfully one day, I was watching a Rachael Ray episode and she explained how she baked bacon. What a genius! I don't bake my bacon like hers, however, the end result is the same... Crispy, delicious bacon with no grease to clean up!

How to Bake Bacon Tutorial

After you have purchased your favorite brand of bacon, (we have our own bacon butchered for us from our own farm raised pigs) lay the bacon in a single layer, not overlapping on a foil lined rimmed baking sheet. Rimmed baking sheet is important so none of the grease makes a mess in your oven. Aluminum foil makes the clean up process a cinch. That really is all the prep work you need to do! Simple!

Do I Need to Flip the Bacon?

Now that your prep work is done, you will place the sheet pans full of bacon in a cold oven. I can get 2 sheet pans on one rack, if you can't that is fine. You can rotate your pans half way through the baking time. Next, turn the oven on to 400°, and bake anywhere from 14- 20 minutes. You do NOT have to flip the bacon! The bacon is basically "frying" in the oven in it's own grease.

If you are using both racks in your oven, rotate your pans after 8 minutes. The 18 minute mark is usually the perfect amount of time to give us the exact crispiness we like our bacon at. However, this is going to depend on how thick cut the bacon is. If you like your bacon even more crispy, bake an extra minute or so. Watch the bacon carefully the last minute or so because it can go from crispy to burnt extremely fast!

Lastly, after you have removed the bacon from the oven, let it cool in the pans for a minute or two. Then remove bacon and place on a paper towel lined baking sheet. Eat and Enjoy!

P.S. Photographing bacon was a huge challenge for me and I think I need more practice, which means I can bake more bacon and ultimately eat it all too! 😁😉

Can I Keep the Bacon Grease?

For clean up, I let the sheet pans and bacon grease cool completely. Then I carefully pour the bacon grease from the sheet pans into a mason jar and use it for other recipes. Fold up the aluminum foil and toss in the garbage. Easy clean up! If you do not prefer to keep your bacon grease, you can wait for it to cool completely and fold the aluminum foil up and around the bacon grease so none of the grease can escape. Then toss the foil and grease in the garbage. Doing this also prevents a grease mess in your garbage can.

Note... If you prefer you can bake your bacon on a wire rack on top of a lined baking sheet. Doing this will allow the bacon to cook from all sides and makes it extra crispy. This is how I saw Rachael Ray do it.

Recipes you might like to pair with your Baked Bacon!

Banana Belgian Waffles

Favorite French Toast

Sweet Potato Pancakes

After you have learned or tried How to Bake Bacon let me know if you have any other tips or tricks in the comments below!  You can also follow me on Social Media to see what other crazy things my family and I are doing!

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