How to Cook Crispy Bacon in the Oven - The Lemon Bowl® (2024)

FAQs

How to Cook Crispy Bacon in the Oven - The Lemon Bowl®? ›

Bacon should be cooked at 400°F.

Medium-thick bacon slices will need 18 to 20 minutes to reach the perfect level of crispiness. But check the bacon at 10 minutes, and adjust your cooking time to your preferred degree of doneness.

Bacon should be cooked at 400°F.

Medium-thick bacon slices will need 18 to 20 minutes to reach the perfect level of crispiness. But check the bacon at 10 minutes, and adjust your cooking time to your preferred degree of doneness.

My Tips For Crispy Results

Instead of placing the bacon directly on the sheet pan, use an oven-safe cooling rack fitted over a rimmed baking sheet. This means it doesn't sit in the grease as it cooks (so the fat drips down) and there is more air flow, which gets you that perfect crispness.

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Arrange the bacon in a single layer on 2 aluminum foil-lined rimmed baking sheets, or, for extracrispy bacon, arrange on 2 wire racks set over 2 foil-lined rimmed baking sheets. Bake until the bacon is browned and starts to ripple, or to desired doneness, 10 to 20 minutes.

Nope! You don't have to flip it while cooking. You just lay the bacon on a baking sheet, stick it in the oven, and set a timer. The strips of bacon bubble away in the oven (no splattering!) and gradually become the crispy, golden-hued, irresistible bacon we know and love.

Prevent oven splatters.

This from Cindy Capps Lepp: Lay a layer of foil over the bacon; this will keep grease from spitting all over the oven. Remove the foil for the last few minutes of cooking for "final crisping."

Place the bacon in a cold oven, and set the oven temperature to 375°F. Bake the bacon in the oven for 15-20 minutes total. If you are doing more than one pan of bacon, rotate sheet pans from top to bottom halfway through. If you are not using a baking rack, flip the bacon strips halfway through cooking.

Tried and true, this is the way I learned to cook bacon: Lay the strips in a cold skillet, place over medium-low to medium heat, flip and fry until you reach your desired doneness and then transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain.

And it's why you might have some bacon slices that accidentally charcoal a bit too much while other slices are still undercooked. Cooking bacon in the oven cooks all of your bacon slices evenly as the heat surrounds them. They slowly sizzle, don't splatter and end up evenly cooked. It's a beautiful thing.

Just like with many other types of meat, uncooked bacon will be light pink with white strips of fat. When it's ready to eat, those rosy hues will have darkened to a reddish-brown color, and the fat will morph into a tan or golden shade. The other obvious giveaway that your bacon is done is its texture.

Is it better to bake or fry bacon in the oven? ›

Cooking bacon in the oven doesn't take any longer than in a pan. Oven bacon gets just as crispy, if not crispier, and there's very little mess to clean up after. Making a batch of bacon in the oven also means you can do other things while it's cooking.

"This is my favorite way of making bacon, no mess, no cleanup! Comes out just like fried bacon crispy, fries in the oven in it's own bacon grease. The pepper is optional."

There are three ways to cook bacon in the oven—directly on an unlined sheet pan, on a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil, or on a metal cooling rack set over a sheet pan.

🥓 Cooking bacon in the oven on a sheet tray with parchment paper is a convenient and hands-off method that gives you crispy, flat and evenly cooked bacon.

Even if you're in a hurry, we really don't recommend this method. Stovetop (medium-low heat): We started with a cold pan, put the bacon in, and turned the heat to medium-low. It took 18 minutes to cook and the result was bacon with a great bite, good color, and rich flavor. This one's definitely a winner.

Cook on medium-low heat—you want to render a lot of the fat out of the bacon and this takes time. Don't rush it. Turn bacon occasionally with tongs so bacon cooks evenly. Since most pans don't heat evenly, you should move the bacon to a different part of the pan when flipping it.

Foil or parchment paper.

You can cook bacon directly on an unlined, ungreased baking sheet. However, it makes quite a mess. I prefer to line the baking sheet with parchment or foil to make cleanup quick and easy when I'm finished.