Frying bacon in a pan may be the most common approach, but it often leaves the strips limp, greasy and unevenly cooked. A far simpler method, using the oven, produces a crispier, tastier result with far less mess.
Bacon naturally cooks in its own fat, so adding oil is unnecessary. When oil is poured over it, the fatty white parts begin cooking at a much faster rate without rendering properly, causing the white edges to burn before the pink meat is fully cooked.
Why pan-frying lets bacon down
The result is bacon that is both charred and rubbery. Oil also causes the pan to become very hot, while the combination of fat and oil splatters grease everywhere, making cleaning up more difficult.
Lori Yates, a cook and founder of Foxes Love Lemons, explained that at culinary school bacon is never cooked in a pan. She said: “Going to culinary school certainly introduced me to fancy kitchen techniques like making French pastries and hollandaise sauce.
“But it also introduced me to something so simple, so basic, so obvious, that I was left scratching my head as to why I hadn’t thought of it before: how to cook bacon in the oven.”
How to cook bacon in the oven
Oven-cooked bacon is surrounded by heat from all sides, allowing the fat to render slowly and cook the meat without any oil. It comes out crispier and with a richer flavour, since it is not doused in oil.
To begin, preheat the oven to 190°C and line a rimmed tray with baking paper or tin foil. Place the bacon in a single layer, ensuring the slices do not overlap, otherwise they will not cook evenly.
Put the tray in the oven for roughly 20 minutes. For chewy bacon, take it out as soon as it is browned; for extra crispy bacon, leave it for two or three minutes more. There is no need to flip the bacon, as it cooks evenly on its own, but check it a few minutes before the end of the cooking time because bacon can quickly go from perfect to overdone.
Once done, place the bacon on paper towels to soak up any excess grease. The result is crispy, golden and more flavourful than the pan-fried version.
