Bacon in the Oven (Easy & Crispy)

Bacon lovers, have you tried cooking bacon in the oven? The crispiest, tastiest, can’t-stop-eating-it bacon is cooked not in a skillet, but in the oven!

I know very few people who don’t like bacon. In fact, most people LOVE bacon. But what most people are conflicted about is the best way to cook bacon. It cooks fast in the microwave but gets unevenly crispy. It’s great on a skillet but is so messy and splatters grease everywhere. I have found the best way to cook bacon is in the oven! It bakes evenly, is crispy, and leaves all the mess in the pan to be cleaned up later!

Why This Recipe Works

Easy – Cooking oven baked bacon is so easy! Just line a baking sheet with parchment paper, add bacon, and set a timer. Viola! Perfect bacon every time.

Perfect for batch cooking – Do you have some recipes coming up for the week that require perfectly crispy bacon? Then this is the way to batch your bacon – right in the oven!

Keeps well – After you batch bake this oven baked bacon, you can keep it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.

Crispy, crispy, crispy – I can’t emphasize enough how amazingly crispy this bacon gets in the oven. If you love crispy bacon, then this recipe is for you!

Here’s How You Make It

Have I mentioned how simple it is to get the best bacon with this recipe? Here’s how to cook bacon!

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and place parchment paper on a baking sheet. (Alternately, you can line your baking sheet with aluminum foil and top with a wire rack, like a cooling rack, on which to cook your bacon – the aluminum foil will catch the drippings from the bacon fat!) (photo 1)
2. Put the strips of bacon right on the parchment paper, making sure the slices don’t touch. (photo 2)
3. Put the bacon in the oven for 14 minutes for chewy bacon, 16 for crispy, and 18 for super extra-crisp and crunchy bacon, or if using thick-cut bacon. (photo 3)
4. Remove the pan from the oven, take bacon off the parchment with a fork or tongs, and lay it on a paper-towel lined plate to cool and soak off the excess bacon grease. (photo 4)
5. Serve!

Benefits of Cooking Bacon in the Oven

No turning – Cooking oven baked bacon is the best way for so many reasons, but one of them is that you don’t need to flip it! If your oven cooks unevenly, you might consider rotating the pan halfway through, but there’s no need to take it out and flip each piece of bacon over like you would have to for bacon cooked in a skillet.

Big batch – You can easily scale this recipe to feed a few or a crowd by simply adding more bacon to a large, rimmed baking sheet pan. You can make a lot of bacon at once this way!

Multitasking – You can free up your stovetop space by using your oven instead of a skillet to cook your bacon.

Safer and cleaner – Even a two-inch deep skillet won’t keep the grease splatters at bay. Your oven is the perfect containment for all of those splatters and will keep your skin burn-free, your clothes stain-free, and your countertops nice and clean.

How Do You Cook Bacon in the Oven Without Smoking the House?

I have found that bacon itself doesn’t smoke up the house, it’s the grease that might drop off into the oven that causes the smokiness.

To prevent this, make sure your oven is cleaned regularly. Also, be sure to use a baking sheet that has raised edges so that the grease stays in the pan and doesn’t spill out into your oven.

Expert Tips and Tricks

• I prefer to use parchment as it tends to yield crispier bacon, but foil works too. 
• This recipe for how to cook bacon in the oven works for as many or as few pieces of bacon as you wish, adding more bacon will not change the cooking time – simply add more bacon slices to your lined baking sheet and be sure that they are not overlapping. 
• The bacon will crisp up additionally as it cools, so be sure to take that into account when calculating your cooking time.
• The oven temperature of 400 is fine for any thickness of bacon – you’ll just have to watch your cooking time: less for thin-sliced, more for thick-sliced.

More Recipes You’ll Enjoy

Looking for ways to incorporate all that tasty bacon? Try my recipes for Green Beans with Mushrooms and Bacon, Strawberry Chicken Bacon and Wraps, and Bacon Avocado Egg Salad.

• Bacon Avocado Egg Salad
• Super Moist Cornbread
• Spinach Artichoke Dip
• Apple Cranberry Walnut Salad

Have you tried this method for preparing bacon in the oven? YAY! Please rate the recipe below!