100 Great Bacon Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How to make the best bacon in the world? ›

Always cook bacon on foil or parchment paper at 400°F. Cook regular sliced bacon for 14 minutes; thick-cut bacon for 18 minutes. If you cook less than a full sheet of bacon, check after 12 minutes. For extra-crispy bacon, bake it on top of a metal cooling rack set over the baking sheet.

They cook it the best way possible, on a sheet pan in the oven. The bonus is while it takes longer to make this way, you can make more at once, the pieces are more or less flat and they come out crispy. Or they throw it in the deep fryer once it's done.

1: Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil or parchment paper, and lay out as many bacon strips as will fit snuggly without overlapping. 2: Place in a cold oven. Then heat the oven to 400 degrees F and bake to desired crispness, 25 to 35 minutes. 3: Drain well on a paper-towel-lined platter.

The secret is pre-cooking your bacon

Regardless of the perfect meat-to-fat ratio and peak freshness, the real secret to diner-worthy bacon is the cooking method. According to Epicurious, par-cooking it in the oven is the preferred method of many restaurant owners.

Why Does Cooking Bacon in Water Work? The addition of water keeps the initial cooking temperature low and gentle, so the meat retains its moisture and stays tender as the fat renders. Plus, since the water helps render the fat, there will be significantly less splatter as your bacon finishes in the pan.

Bacon should always be put into a cold pan and heated from there. In addition, draining the fat is a requirement. It's difficult to get bacon crispy if it's sitting in liquid bacon fat. In a microwave or in an oven this isn't a problem (I put bacon on a draining pan in the oven), but you have to remove fat from a pan.

Bake the bacon in a 400°F oven until well-browned and crisp, this should take between 15 and 18 minutes depending on the thickness of your bacon. To follow Martha's method to a T, you'll need to rotate the sheet pan halfway through.

Place bacon in pan and bake until lightly browned and crisp, 15 to 20 minutes. While the bacon is cooking, whisk together the clover honey and ancho chile powder in a medium bowl until smooth. Remove the bacon from the oven, using mitts, and carefully drain the fat, tipping the pan, into a medium bowl.

Tried and true, this is the way I learned to cook bacon: Lay the strips in a cold skillet, place over medium-low to medium heat, flip and fry until you reach your desired doneness and then transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain.

Is it better to cook bacon in the oven or on the stove? ›

Oven bacon gets just as crispy, if not crispier, and there's very little mess to clean up after. Making a batch of bacon in the oven also means you can do other things while it's cooking.

According to the USDA, natural meat such as bacon must be free from added artificial ingredients. That means this type of bacon cannot contain added nitrites or nitrates, nor ingredients like sodium phosphates.

Smoking the bacon preserves it further and adds flavor. Smoking is usually done at low heat for enough time to flavor the bacon without cooking it. Different types of wood chips will add a specific flavor. You'll often see bacon smoked with applewood, hickory, or cherry wood chips, but other flavors can be used.