Saturday, June 27, 2009

Oven Baked Bacon

It's no secret that I love bacon. The smell of bacon in the morning is almost as good as fresh-brewed coffee. In my mind, weekend mornings are for frying bacon.

The thing is, I have decided that frying bacon on the stove top is a colossal pain. Especially since I've discovered how easy - and delicious - oven baked bacon is.

I've seen recipes for baking bacon that recommend placing the bacon on a wire rack, so the grease cooks off. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS METHOD. The fat is where the flavor is people. You want bacon to cook in its own fat. Bacon fat is to bacon what the egg yolk is the the egg white. Sure, the fat can be used separately to flavor vegetables just like egg yolks are key for custards. But - you would never eat a fried egg white, would you? Of course not. And, you should never eat bacon without its delicious fat.

Oven baked bacon is super easy and much easier than pan frying if you are cooking more than 3 or 4 pieces. And really, don't you always want to cook more than 3 or 4 pieces?

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Take a sheet pan and line it with foil. This will make for easy clean-up - once you have drained and reserved the fat. Space bacon slices and 1/2-inch or so apart. Once the oven is hot, put the pan of bacon in and set the timer for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, your bacon will be well on its way to being done. I buy thick-sliced bacon, so after the first 10 minutes, I remove the pan, flip all the slices and then return the pan to the oven for another 5-10 minutes. You kind of need to keep an eye on it, because the timing varies depending on how many slices of bacon you are cooking and how thick they are.

Once they are cooked to your desired crispness, remove the slices and place them on a plate lined with paper-towels. Now, you can move on to the eggs...

3 comments:

CV said...

Thank you for posting this! My favorite way to cook bacon is in the oven. It tastes so much better, and the oil doesn't leap up from the pan and destroy the skin on my forearm. :)

Corinna said...

Useful tutorial. Thank you, Sonja!

Harish said...

I enjoyed reading your blog ~ thanks for posting such useful content./Nice article and great photos. Very nicely done!



Baking Oven