100 Great Bacon Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to perfect bacon? ›

Lay out the bacon strips without overlapping in a cold pan. This helps the fat render slowly, for consistently cooked strips. 3: Cook over medium heat — again, good for even rendering. Turn the strips as needed until they reach the desired crispness, 8 to 12 minutes.

Kenji López-Alt recommends 425 degrees, which he says takes 20 minutes for crispy bacon, but he doesn't recommend going much higher than that. “Cooking at 475 left me with bacon that was threatening to burn in spots and still undercooked in others after just 15 minutes,” López-Alt wrote.

Plan for about 1 pound of bacon for every 3 to 4 people, and know that you can fit about a pound of bacon on a half-sheet pan (a.k.a. about the size of your garden-variety cookie sheet).

Brush uncooked bacon slices with a slurry of balsamic vinegar and maple syrup, brown sugar, or honey, place them on a rimmed, foil-lined tray in a 400°F oven, check every five minutes or two to see how things are faring, flip and baste as needed, and when the bacon is cooked and the glazed thickened, cool the bacon on ...

Even though it doesn't necessarily come with a mild flavor, bacon is a total blank canvas. With the help of some extra ingredients and spices for your bacon, you can take its original savory, salty, and smoky flavor and enhance it with things like chili powder and coffee, Sriracha, maple syrup, brown sugar, or honey.

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.

Let your bacon sit at room temperature for fifteen minutes or so before you cook it. It will help the fat render more quickly, so it will be crispy and not burnt.

Don't bother with racks, crimped foil, or stacked baking sheets; just lay out your bacon strips on a rimmed baking sheet and bake them in a 425°F (220°C) oven until they're as crisp as you like (about 20 minutes was right for me). Drain on paper towels, and you've got a big pile of perfectly cooked bacon on your hands.

Bacon should be cooked at 400°F.

Medium-thick bacon slices will need 18 to 20 minutes to reach the perfect level of crispiness. But check the bacon at 10 minutes, and adjust your cooking time to your preferred degree of doneness.

Don't fret! Instead, turn to the oven to keep those tantalizing strips crunchy and warm. Whether you prefer to microwave, pan-fry, or bake your bacon, the oven will allow you to keep your bacon crispy for up to a few hours. Set the temperature to 200ºF and center a baking rack.

Why does restaurant bacon taste so good? ›

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.

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.

1. **Cooking temperature**: Cooking bacon at too low of a temperature can result in chewy rather than crispy bacon. Make sure you're cooking the bacon over medium-high heat to allow it to crisp up properly.

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.