Every month, Lori Yates from Foxes Love Lemons takes a lesson she learned in culinary school, while working with some of the country’s best chefs, and brings it into the home kitchen, where her tips will help make you a faster, better, and more confident cook. Welcome to her column, Home Chef. Today, we’re talking about the side dish you know you need to make every time you scramble an egg.
I’m going to share a little trick that I’m guessing 80 percent of people who like bacon already know. However, before I went to culinary school, I was in the 20 percent of people who had never thought to do this. Granted, for a long time, I wasn’t a big fan of bacon. And I think two major reasons for that were how smelly it makes your house when you cook it, and how big of a mess it is (grease splatters everywhere!).
With this method, your house will still smell bacon-y, but maybe a smidge less so than with the old frying pan method. Much of the smell stays inside your oven. And those grease splatters? Hey – better in the oven than on the counter. My oven has seen way worse.
Ok, so here we go. Let’s get started bakin’ bacon. This will only take a minute. Well, 18 minutes…
Line a rimmed baking pan with parchment paper. Please make sure the pan is rimmed, or you’re going to have a huge bacon grease mess on your hands. Lay your bacon out on this pan in a single layer. If you need two pans, use two pans. They can be a little closer than I’ve done here, but just make sure the bacon pieces aren’t overlapping or anything.
Bake your bacon at 375° for 18 to 20 minutes or until it reaches your desired level of crispness. You don’t even need to flip it. Just let it do it’s thing for 18 minutes. When it’s done, use tongs to transfer the bacon to a paper-towel lined plate.
Beyond the less mess/smelliness factor, there are a few other advantages to this method. First, it’s a great method to use when you’re preparing breakfast for a crowd. The bacon is just cooking away in the oven, unattended to, while you’re finishing up the rest of the meal on the stovetop. Second, you get to eat almost cartoon-like perfect bacon. It’s not shriveled up little pieces – it’s mostly flat, perfectly cooked bacon. Beautiful, beautiful, cartoon bacon.
