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Learn how to bake bacon in the oven in this easy tutorial. Make delicious, perfectly crispy bacon each and every time with this simple kitchen hack.
This method for how to cook bacon in the oven is perfect for cooking for a crowd, or when you just want to prep a lot of cooked bacon for quick meals.
And because cooked bacon is so easy to reheat, anyone in your family can make their own breakfast. And that makes you a genius.
How to Bake Bacon in the Oven:
*You’ll find a printable recipe card with all these details at the bottom of the post.
You’re going to need a rimmed baking sheet and some foil.
- You’ll completely cover the baking sheet with foil and then place bacon slices on the baking sheet. Try not to overlap slices.
- I cook mine at 400˚F for 15-20 minutes and then cook in 5-minute increments until it is almost exactly how I want it. It will continue to crisp up a bit after you take it out of the oven. Every oven is different, so use your eyes and your nose as your best judgment during the baking process.
- Remove the bacon from the baking sheet and place it on a plate lined with paper towels or newspaper.
How Long to Cook Bacon in the Oven
I prefer to cook ours at 400˚F, and it takes about 20-30(ish) minutes. Our oven has many hot spots, so I start checking on it at 15 minutes and I also rotate the pan.
Please note, each brand of bacon will be different and cooking time will vary depending on the cut. Thick-cut bacon can take up to 30 minutes, while thinner cuts may only take 15.
If you need to cook just a few slices at a time, try Air Fryer Bacon or Air Fryer Turkey Bacon for another fast and mess-free method.
How to Make Your Bacon Extra Crispy
Extra crispy bacon is the best! To make your bacon extra crispy, cook it for 2-3 minutes after it looks completely baked. If the ends of the bacon are cooking faster than the middle, you can reduce the temperature to 375˚F.
You’ll also have the best results with bacon that is marked as thin-cut or thin-sliced.
To take bacon from crispy to CRISPY, you can actually dredge it in all-purpose flour before it is cooked in the oven. Dredge the bacon slices individually through the flour and place them on a foil-lined baking sheet. You’ll need to refrigerate the bacon uncovered, overnight before baking.
Pro Tips
- Need to get rid of the smell from baking bacon in your house? Simmer a saucepan of water on the stove with ground cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, and a splash of almond extract if you have it.
- Reheat the bacon in the microwave for 30 seconds for a fast breakfast or for making the perfect BLT in a flash. You can also reheat it in the air fryer at 340˚F for 1 minute.
How to Bake Bacon
Equipment
- Foil
- Tongs
- paper towels
Ingredients
Instructions
- Completely cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil.Bacon
- Place bacon slices on the baking sheet. Try not to overlap slices.
- Cook at 400˚F degrees for 15-20 minutes, and (if necessary) continue to cook in 5-minute increments until it is almost exactly how you want it.
- Using tongs, remove the crispy bacon from the pan and place it on a plate lined with paper towels.
- Layer bacon and paper towels on the plate until all the bacon is covered.
Notes
- Please note, each brand of bacon will be different and cooking time will vary depending on the cut. Thick-cut bacon can take up to 30 minutes, while thinner cuts may only take 15.
- Cooked bacon will continue to crisp up a bit on the tray after you take it out of the oven.
- This method also works great with turkey bacon, but I reduce that initial cook time to 10 minutes before checking on it.
- Store cooked bacon in the freezer for up to 3 months or 1 week in the fridge.
- Reheat baked bacon in the microwave for 30 seconds for a fast breakfast
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Thanks for this timely reminder that I can do my bacon in the oven along with my pancakes for easy holiday season breakfasts to please a crowd! I love the idea of dredging in flour for extra crispy – do you know if it works with gluten free flour? If no data is collected yet, my family can test it and let you know!
No data collected yet! Would love to hear your experience.
“How to use cooked bacon: throw in your bff Mary’s mouth”
You know you were the first one to teach me how to cook bacon in Arizona!
An honor I will remember forever!
This is so easy and I LOVE that it keeps the mess down!!! I had just scrubbed my gas stovetop and so making bacon on it was not an option! I got this email and realized I had bacon in the fridge so I made it this way. It was great and really easy clean up! Thanks!
Sounds like it was perfect timing for you, Carolyn! So glad we could help and I love that we have another convert to this awesome method.
Do you grill bacon at all? That would probably be our default way of doing it although I did work somewhere where we baked large trays of it in the oven for convenience.
By grill, do you mean cook on the stovetop? No, I don’t. All in the oven!
I think I may have meant broil? Like neither in the oven or in a pan on top of the stove but under a direct source of heat from above. Does that make sense?
Totally makes sense. And no, I have never found it necessary to do that!
I did this today, Sarah! I had a bulk packet of the bitty bits rather than full slices. So a perfect method for this. It was nice bacon, just trimmings presumably from the pretty slices in the expensive packs. The kitchen is in bits as we are decorating, so a tray with foil on was perfect!
I have heard that British bacon is totally different than US bacon. Has that been your experience?
Either way, I’m so glad this worked out for you!
Yes, I would say in two ways. First the brines and cures used are different to those used in North America.
1.We don’t usually get any kind of sweetness in it, maybe a little sugar, but not usually maple syrup or whatever. But on the whole, North American foods are sweeter than UK/Europe.
2. The cut of meat tends to vary. As far as my experience goes, North American bacon is always cut from the belly of the pork, long skinny strips. We do get this, we call it streaky. The other cut we get is called ‘back bacon’ which has a short length of the kind of streaky bit, but there is a large lean ‘eye’. If you look at the link below, it’s the one described as ‘rashers’.
My experience of North American bacon is mostly Canadian (but this has been streaky, not the rounds I have seen on pictures today) and whatever we pick up in the Caribbean (mostly US import)
https://www.baconscouts.com/types-of-bacon/
I just remembered. There was a cut called ‘collar bacon’ which my mum got when I was a child. It was a nice mix of fat and lean, but seems to have fallen out of general fashion. It tends to be, from what I have seen, a specialty product these days. It was always cheaper than back bacon (referred to as rashers in the article I linked to above) but more expensive than streaky (which is like US bacon), presumably relating to the fat/lean balance.
Interesting! I did know you called our bacon streaky bacon, but I assumed it wasn’t your normal cut.
I can’t stand maple or honey bacon. Blech!!!
This has been life changing! No more greasy mess and the bacon is perfect every time! ????
Awww, so glad it has worked out for you Amanda! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. 🙂
Found the site this morning & have grabbed several recipes from you – mostly because of the very funny, sarcastic, witty way you have of making these so un-Martha like.
Ha, welcome to the family Stacy!!
Tried this baked bacon with 2 pounds of bacon for our “breakfast for dinner” Christmas Eve. Soooo easy and no splatter and easy clean up.
So glad it worked out!
I never ever cook bacon, because I hate hate hate the cleanup (including the grease spatters all over my clothes and counters), and I don’t love bacon enough to deal with all that. But – I decided to do a Whole 30 this month, and as part of it, decided to bake myself some bacon and some egg bites. This is SO easy to make and clean up. I only have one real problem… I made the first batch specifically to use in egg bites. By the time I had enough duck eggs gathered to make my egg bites… I had already eaten the bacon! (I made more!)
Sydnie, I’m so excited to hear this and I think it is awesome it helped you with your meal prep!
How is your Whole30 going? Is it your first round or are you an alum?
It’s going pretty well! I don’t feel like it’s been life-changing, but I’m definitely cooking (a lot!) more, and not stopping at drive-thrus on my way home from work! So that’s a good thing. I’m super grateful to you and all of your recipes for help!!
Yeah, I never got the “tiger blood” they talked about, but I know Troy felt LOADS better by the end of it.
Hey, I’m going to email you because I need your opinion about something. I’ll use the email you entered (it’s hidden to the public don’t worry) to leave this comment.
I tried this for the first time last weekend, and then took bacon to work with me during the week. I told everyone how I’d baked it in the oven and I’m now a total bacon baking convert. Holy crap! Love this
Isn’t it the best Alli? Soooooooeasy. So glad you liked it!
At high altitude this cooks much more quickly, but still works great!
Sarah I finally did this tonight! My whole f-ing world has changed. Everything has this lovely bacon hue to it.
I have you to thank for this new-found happiness
who-hoo, there is no going back now my friend!! Life is great with bacon colored glasses.
This is the only way I’ll cook bacon – no greasy stove top, no burned arms and hands, and no smoke alarm going off! I put two cookie racks in my baking sheet and place the bacon on top so the grease drips down below. Sadly there’s not usually any left to freeze after my husband and I get done with it…
You must be bacon fiends! Which I like.
I’ve done this for years, but hey, I’m older than you. (wink)
I don’t use racks or broiler pans either because I don’t want to clean them. I just make sure I blot it well on paper towels.
And darn those bacon eating dinosaurs!!!
Yep, the extra clean up isn’t worth it. I also blot it super well. It works!
Allosaurs are carnivores after all!
We learned this trick several years ago. One step we add is to cook the bacon on cookie racks. That way our bacon isn’t covered in grease
I used to do that but I didn’t notice a difference in the grease content AND I had to wash the baking rack. No thanks. 🙂
I’ve often seen recipes for baking bacon but always wondered if it splatters all over the oven. Much easier to clean the stove top than the oven. However, if it doesn’t make a mess in the oven……. I just might need to make bacon a little more often.
Nope, no splattering. My theory is that because the bacon heats up slowly it isn’t hitting a hot pan and reacting. I can hear the sizzle but no popping and my oven isn’t greasy. Give it a shot!
if you freeze it on waxed paper in the (clean) baking sheets, THEN transfer it to a freezer bag (or whatever) it doesn’t stick together!
We used to do this all the time before my husband’s cardiologist banned (yes, BANNED) bacon from his (and therefore the entire household’s) diet.
Mine never stick together in the freezer. I let them get really cold in a single file on the plate before freezing, and they’re well blotted. I wonder if that is why.
Can he eat turkey bacon? Do you secretly eat bacon when you’re alone?
I’m sure your whole method is why they don’t stick together. Sounds perfect.
The problem with turkey bacon is the sodium content. The nutrition label should read 5% per serving or less for him (well all people really, but ESPECIALLY him). That is for ANY food, not just bacon products.
The cardiologist absolutely refuses to budge on the topic of eating bacon.
In general, our meat rule is “if it used to have four legs, limit it to once a month” (meaning one four legged animal/month). It is pretty easy to stick to that. We’ve been doing it for almost a year and a half now.
But doc says absolutely no (pork) bacon. Our family doctor thinks that is a little ridiculous, but Hubby(the patient) is listening to the heart doctor. He has absolutely NO desire to be on a table having someone poking at his heart ever again.
I don’t buy bacon and bring it into the house. That would be too mean. But if we go out for breakfast, I might order some. He has even had it twice on restaurant burgers. He is allowed a little wiggle room for treats, he just can’t go crazy.
In other news, the ‘notify me of replies by email’ thingy is back!!!! That is how I knew you replied! Thanks!!
He sounds like a great patient! I will tell you I put smoked paprika in my homemade hummus and my sister-in-law said it tasted like bacon. Maybe invest in some smoked paprika just for the flavor?
Yep, my designer seems to have added it today. Was it automatically checked for you or did you have to check it yourself? Another reader said hers was pre-checked.
I have sweet paprika, I will look for smoked!! Thanks for the tip!
That box is automatically checked, which is perfect for me!
Long time reader, first time commenter. Love the new site! So glad that your first official recipe on your new blog is bacon. What a great way to start 🙂
It just felt right. 🙂
I do ours on a broiler pan. All the grease drains away and no need to flip
So I used to do that, but I felt like the clean up was a giant pain in the butt. I’m ok with flipping because I don’t have to clean the grease up later.
How did you know that I was just wondering how to properly bake bacon? Thank you! I tried it once and it turned out ok, I’m trying your method next!
Because I have Russian spy bots in the devices of all my readers. Doy. 🙂