The Genius Bacon Recipe You Never Thought Of (2024)

FAQs

Is it better to bake bacon at 350 or 400? ›

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.

Preparation. 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.

Pork products need to be cooked until they reach an internal temperature of 145°F. It's hard to measure the temperature of bacon because the strips are so thin. As long as your bacon strips are crispy, they should be fully cooked.

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.

I top one or two rimmed baking sheet pans with sheets of parchment and a row of bacon slices, then bake them at 400°F for 15 minutes. It's just as simple and efficient as it was at the hotel.

Regular, thin-cut bacon will typically bake in 12 minutes at 400 degrees F. If you want it extra crispy, you can let it bake a little longer, but keep a close eye on it. For Thick-Cut Bacon. Thicker bacon will take 14 to 20 minutes, depending upon your thickness and how crisp you would like it to be.

Starting with a Hot Pan

I won't keep you waiting: always start with a cold pan. Whether you like your bacon shatteringly crisp or chewy, the goal is strips that are evenly cooked, without burnt bits of meat or rubbery pockets of fat.

400°F works well for both regular and thick cut bacon.

Heat your oven and cook the bacon for 10 to 20 minutes or until it's reached your desired level of crispiness. I do rotate the pan halfway through, just to ensure even cooking, but that's it. And remember that your bacon will continue to crisp up once it dries.

Take the bacon home immediately and refrigerate it at 40 °F or below. For shelf-stable, cooked bacon, store the product at 85 °F or below.

Use the oven. Put your bacon on a rack on a 1/2 sheet pan and place the pan in a cold oven. Then set the oven to 400° F. As the oven slowly heats up, the bacon fat is gently rendered out, resulting in flat cooked bacon.

Should you let bacon sit out before cooking? ›

In order for the meat and fat in your bacon to cook evenly, they have to be at the same temperature. The fat retains the cold longer than the meat, so letting it sit at room temp for 15 minutes before you start cooking will help produce a more evenly cooked piece of bacon.

1. **Cooking temperature**: Cooking bacon at too low of a temperature can result in chewy rather than crispy bacon. Make sure you're cooking the bacon over medium-high heat to allow it to crisp up properly.

If you use a sheet pan with a rack, bacon is better for you cooked in the oven. On a rack, most of the bacon fat will drip away. Cooked in a skillet, the bacon sits in it's own fat and is more difficult to drain away, so more of the fat remains adhered to the bacon.

It's so incredibly simple! Just preheat oven to 375°F, and arrange your bacon on a slotted pan (like Rach's!) and bake to crisp for 15 to 18 minutes. (Again, if you don't have a slotted pan, Rach says you can make your own by putting a wire cooling rack on top of a baking sheet with a rim.)

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.

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.

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.

No two ovens bake at exactly the same temperature. You'll probably need to test this method a couple of times to find the right time/temperature that works for you. 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.