How to Bake Bacon in the Oven

Who loves bacon? We do! But what do you do if there's a certain someone in your family (ahem, that would be me) who cannot stand the smell that lingers after frying bacon on the stove-top in every nook and corner of the apartment. I have tried it all - cross ventilation, airing out, closing bedroom doors - everything! But nothing seems to work! And since we stay in an apartment and our 'hood' of our over the range microwave is less than useful most of the time!

Cue the baked to perfect crispness in the oven bacon! I can make as many as I want while making our favorite Sunday brunch - Whole-wheat Buttermilk Pancakes and scrambled eggs and this super crispy bacons and sausage links.

For baking the bacon, you need to arrange the strips on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and stick it into an oven pre-heated to 400 F and bake for 14 to 18 minutes (depending on the thickness of the bacon) till the bacon strips are cooked to crispy perfection. Transfer the cooked bacons to a paper towel lined plate and discard the parchment paper and the excess grease in the cookie sheet immediately. If you wish to save the bacon fat, transfer to a container once it has cooled down a little to be handled.

The first time I cooked the bacon in the oven, I did not wash/soak the cookie sheet immediately and the husband grumbled that the cookie sheet was too greasy and was taking too long to be cleaned. I am thinking that the reason might be that we do not very strong dish detergent (like Dawn) so the next few times that I made bacon in the oven, I would just scrub and clean the cookie sheet right away and it did not take much effort at all.

I do not save bacon grease for future use, but always make it a point to drain the bacon grease into a plastic bag (and not into the drain) and throw it in the trash. I follow the same procedure with all other leftover oil.