Why You Can Trust CNET The Best Way to Make Bacon Is Also the Cleanest
This method for making bacon leaves you with crispy strips and very little mess to clean up. It's pork perfection.
Bacon is the king of breakfast, but cooking it doesn't have to make a royal mess.
Bacon is a weekend tradition for most people. There's very little to complain about when someone fries up a batch of fatty pork strips, except for maybe the greasy stove and pans that need cleaning after. The best way to make bacon takes the stovetop and skillet out of the equation. Oven bacon is a true set-it-and-forget-it affair, and if you line a baking tray with foil or parchment paper, you'll have nothing to clean after.
Oven bacon is my new go-to for making big batches of the Sunday morning staple and here I'll explain how easy and clean it is to make bacon in the oven. You can make an entire package in one session -- not possible with most frying pans -- and if you add a dishwasher-safe wire rack, it'll drain some of the extra fat away while cooking, leaving you with leaner, crispier strips.
Below, you'll find the simple steps needed to cook perfect bacon in the oven. When it's done, I've outlined 9 genius ways to use leftover bacon fat.
How to cook perfect bacon in the oven
It's fine if the bacon touches, as long as it's not overlapping.
Here are my tips for cooking perfectly crisp bacon in the oven. Spoiler alert: There aren't many steps, and none of them take very long.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. I would avoid air fryer mode if your oven has it since the fast-moving air is more likely to blow grease around the inside. We're aiming for a mess-free scenario.
Line a baking tray with aluminum foil, or use a nonstick sheet pan for a more eco-friendly approach. If you're going the foil route, make sure the edges ride up the sides of the tray so the grease doesn't spill over the sides and down onto the tray.
If you're using nonstick bakeware, I prefer a ceramic sheet pan or tray but Teflon works well, too.
Arrange bacon on the tray. The strips shouldn't overlap, but it's fine if they touch since they'll shrink down significantly while cooking. If you prefer super crispy bacon with a bit less grease, you can arrange the slices on a wire rack above the tray for the fat to drip down below.
Cook for eight to 10 minutes. Be sure to keep one eye on the bacon as some ovens run hotter than others. If you like your bacon crispy and well done, give it another few minutes. Remember, bacon does a lot of its crisping after it comes out and cools.
Read more: Make Your Next Burger in an Air Fryer and Thank Me Later
Oven bacon is as good as it gets.
Drain the bacon on a sheet or two of paper towels. After a few minutes, you're ready to serve those crispy strips with eggs, in a BLT or crumbled to fancy up boxed mac and cheese.
The best part? After cooking bacon in the oven, all you're left with is a small ball of foil to heave effortlessly into the trash.
A few countertop ovens for cooking bacon
For bacon, I love using a smaller countertop convection model. A large oven works just as well but takes longer to preheat and, dang it, we want bacon now.
The Ninja Double Oven and Breville's Smart Oven Air are two multifunction ovens that work well. Both are large enough that bacon grease won't splatter on the ceiling, but are small and powerful enough to preheat quickly and cook bacon to a crisp in under 10 minutes. (We've also got tips for how to clean your cast iron skillet and how to make boxed mac and cheese taste so much better.)
Can you make bacon in an air fryer?
An air fryer is another cleaner tool to make bacon in.
Absolutely. Easy air fryers are perfect for making bacon in a very similar manner to oven bacon. Here's a step-by-step guide to making bacon in an air fryer.