How to Cook Bacon in the Oven

Sick of grease splatters on your kitchen cabinets? Don't feel like babysitting breakfast? Yeah?! It's time to learn how to cook bacon in the oven.

This is the easiest way to cook bacon

You don't need anything fancy. You'll even cook the bacon without a rack! Just need a sheet pan with a rim to catch the grease that will cook off, and some aluminum foil to make cleanup easy.

how to cook bacon in the oven without foil?

For some reason the anti-foil people always come at me. So if you like spending your time attacking food bloggers for not following your own personal code of foil ethics, or heck, maybe you are just out of foil ( it happens ), here is how you cook bacon in the oven without foil:

Exactly the same way as if you were cooking bacon in the oven with foil: just don't use the foil. You can also use parchment paper if you'd like - it also reduces the mess and doesn't get the foil people angry.

The REAL question here is "How do I clean up after cooking bacon without foil or parchment paper?"

After you've followed the directions below and have removed your bacon from the pan, allow the pan to sit out on the counter, away from a heat source. The bacon fat will solidify as it comes to room temperature. Once this happens, use a spatula to scrape all of the grease into a mason jar (the right way), or into the trash (the way that makes Southerners cry.)

You're now left with a pan that is still greasy, but not nearly as hard to clean as if you'd started with liquid grease. Proceed with washing it at this point just like you would a normal pan. Your kitchen pipes will thank you.

how to cook bacon in the oven without making a mess

The oven baked bacon cooking process is inherently less messy than other methods of cooking bacon. The easiest way to reduce any residual mess is to use a pan much larger than your bacon, so that any splatters are more likely to be caught on the pan and not in a firey ball at the bottom of your oven.

do you have to flip bacon in the oven?

Nope! Just let it do its thing without flipping. Depending on how even your oven heat is, you may want to rotate the pan during the cooking process to make sure all of the pieces cook at the same rate.

how long should bacon be cooked in the oven?

A few things determine how long to cook bacon in the oven:

• thickness of the bacon
• temperature of the oven
• the pieces of bacon themselves ( how much fat, how it was cut, how was it cured/not cured, etc )

For instance, the time it takes to cook thick bacon in the oven at 350 F, is of course going to be different than how long it takes to make thin bacon in the oven at 425 F.

The cooking times below are guidelines, not hard rules. Your oven may also play a part! So start checking the bacon for a nice brown color at the lower bound of the ranges given, and if it's still not as cooked as you'd like it at the upper bound, don't be afraid to add another minute or two.

Bacon will continue to crisp up once it is removed from the oven! I like to remove my bacon from the oven when it is JUST shy of being my perfect crispiness, and then it's perfect after it drains for a minute or two out of the oven.

Cooking times and temperatures for thick bacon:

• 450 F, 15-20 minutes
• 425 F, 18-25 minutes
• 400 F, 22-28 minutes
• 375 F, 25-30 minutes
• 350 F, 28-33 minutes

Cooking times and temperatures for regular to thin bacon:

• 450 F, 10-15 minutes
• 425 F, 13-18 minutes
• 400 F, 15-21 minutes
• 375 F, 18-25 minutes
• 350 F, 22-28 Minutes