Nitrate Free Bacon
Eating nitrate free bacon enthusiastically since 2005
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How to Bake Bacon
1) Set oven to 400 degrees
2) Foil line a baking sheet
3) Place bacon on baking sheet - do not worry about overcrowding too much but single layer is needed
4) Set timer to 20-23 minutes (based on desired crispiness)
5) Put baking sheet in the oven, top rack
6) Check on desired crispy levels at about 18 minutes (remove if you like it chewy)
7) Remove bacon at anywhere between 18-23 minutes depending on desired crispiness
8) Let sit for about a minute
9) Remove from baking sheet onto a paper towel or paper towel covered plate (to absorb grease)
10) Enjoy your delicious, easy cleanup oven-baked bacon!
Why Bake Bacon?
Baking Bacon is not only fun to say, but it is easy to clean up, easy to control the crispiness, keeps the albeit wonderful yet intrusive bacon cooking smell inside the oven. Many cooks have turned to this method for the above reasons, but also because it does not require as much babysitting as pan fried bacon.
The end result? Well, what you get is a great, flat, perfectly crispy (to your liking) piece of bacon.
What About Thick Cut Bacon?
Thick cut bacon is even a better example of delicious, savory, smoky bacon cooked to perfection with baked in the oven. I prefer thick cut bacon which is baked over pan fried bacon. Why? The crispy factor is amazing. It is difficult to get a perfect combination of crisp vs chew when pan frying thick cut bacon, partially because there is extra moisture (grease) that comes from thick cut bacon.
This is how you would modify the instructions above to cater toward thick cut (hopefully nitrate free) bacon. Change the oven temperature to 425 degrees and the timer to 15 minutes. Keep the bacon on the top rack. What I prefer to do is halfway through baking, when there is a considerable pool of grease, I will drain the grease (VERY CAREFULLY - with two oven gloves on, and no pets around!) by pouring it into an old can that I can throw out later. Rearrange the bacon to be one layer on the baking sheet (it will slide around when your pour out the grease). Place baking sheet with bacon back into the over and monitor closely for the remaining time. Without the grease, the bacon cooks pretty rapidly, so the first time you do this, you want to stand over the oven and check every minute or so toward the end.
I hope you enjoyed how to bake bacon! I will post a video later that demonstrates these instructions.