How to Bake Bacon in the Oven
Learn how to bake bacon in the oven in this easy tutorial. Stop standing over a hot stove dodging hot oil and covering your kitchen in grease. Make perfectly crispy bacon each and every time with this easy kitchen hack.
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If you’re sick of messy stovetops and popping grease from making bacon in a skillet, my friends, there is a better way. One of the best things about learning how to bake bacon is that you can do a whole bunch of it at once.
This method is perfect when cooking for a crowd or when you just want to store a lot of cooked bacon for quick meals. And because it is so easy to reheat, anyone in your family can make their own breakfast.
And that makes you a genius.
How to Use Cooked Bacon
We love to dice leftovers and whip up a batch of Bacon Egg Rolls for a fun and savory make-ahead breakfast. It’s also fabulous with Kale Chopped Salad, Air Fryer Brussels Sprouts, Instant Pot Potato Salad, or in Mini Quiche Appetizers.
No matter how you use it, cooked bacon is a no-brainer component for easy meal prep. Imagine a freezer stash with frozen scrambled eggs and bacon ready to go for a fast breakfast!
How Long to Cook Bacon in the Oven
I prefer to cook ours at 400 degrees F, and it takes about 20-30(ish) minutes. Our oven is very basic with many hot spots, so I do start checking on it at 15 minutes and rotate the pan.
Please note, each brand will be different and cooking time will vary depending on the cut. I prefer thicker cut (about 1/8 inch thick) and to invest in quality brands when possible. I love the bacon from Butcher Box and have also created an entire post on Whole30 compliant bacon brands.
If you need to cook just a few slices at a time, try Air Fryer Bacon for another fast and mess-free method.
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, some foil (because who wants to clean up that mess?). In some cases, you’ll want an oven-safe baking rack to go into the sheet pan. I don’t use one because I find the bacon cooks great without it, and it’s one more thing to wash.
- You’ll completely cover the baking sheet with foil and place the bacon as close together as possible. Try not to overlap too much.
- I cook mine at 400 degrees for 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 that initial baking.
- Remove the bacon from the baking sheet and place it on a plate lined with paper towels or newspaper.
- Allow it to cool completely and then transfer to storage. We use these reusable silicone bags for the freezer, or glass storage containers for the fridge.
Common Questions/Troubleshooting
Won’t this get my oven dirty? This is not really an issue unless you buy super fatty bacon. If you’re worried about it, you can always place a piece of foil or parchment over the baking sheet while it is in the oven. Additionally, placing a baking rack inside the baking sheet keeps any grease off the bacon, eliminating any popping.
Don’t I have to flip it? Nope, but you can if you’d like to. I have done it both ways and find it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Pro Tips/Recipe Notes:
- You must use a baking sheet with rimmed edges so that the grease does not spill over.
- Store in the freezer for up to 3 months or 1 week in the fridge.
- Reheat in the microwave for 30 seconds for a fast breakfast or making the perfect BLT in a flash.
- If you don’t use the grease for cooking or seasoning cast iron, simply allow it to harden on the foil and then gather up the foil and throw it in the garbage.
- This method also works great with turkey bacon, but I reduce that initial cook time to ~15 minutes.
- Want to get rid of that bacony smell 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. Pretty soon your house will smell like you’re baking an amazing apple pie.
Other Great Make-Ahead Breakfast Staples:
- Fluffy Whole Wheat Waffles
- Air Fryer Bacon
- Easy Make-Ahead Scrambled Eggs
- Paleo Muesli
- Toasting Bagels in the Air Fryer
- Instant Pot Egg Bites
- 32 Amazing Make-Ahead Breakfasts
- Check out all our Whole30 Breakfast Recipes
How to Bake Bacon in the Oven
Ingredients
Instructions
- Completely cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil and place the bacon as close together as possible. Try not to overlap too much.
- Cook at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, and then flip and (if necessary) cook in 5-minute increments until it is almost exactly how you want it. It will continue to crisp up a bit after you take it out of the oven.
- Remove the 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
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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!