We won’t wax eloquent about the virtues of bacon, but will instead assume you are familiar with them and are a fellow member of the Pig Brothers Brigade. What we want to talk about here is the process of getting the little pork pleasure strips cooked to perfection.
We know of no one who likes to man a skillet, enduring grease pops while waiting for the twins, Brown and Crispy, to arrive. I certainly don’t.
I had heard of cooking bacon in the oven, but had previously experienced disappointing, if not disastrous, results, until the secret was revealed to me: Do not preheat the oven! Seriously!
Place your strips of bacon on a baking sheet that you have lined with parchment paper. You may be inclined to put two layers of parchment, but be forewarned — you won’t have any bacon grease to use for other things if you use too much parchment paper. It will suck it up and it won’t give it back. If you don’t need bacon grease for anything. Oh, wait. What a silly notion. Never mind.
My friends Denise and Patti swear by using those “stone” baking sheets like Pampered Chef sells. They aren’t really stone, they are a special kind of baking clay. With those, they skip the parchment paper. If someone would PLEASE HAVE A PAMPERED CHEF PARTY AROUND ME, I could buy some of my own. Then I could give you a firsthand recommendation. Yes, I would do that for you.
Once your bacon is on whatever you are going to put it on, stick it in the oven. THEN turn the dial to 400 degrees. We covered this already, but just in case you spaced out, DO NOT PREHEAT.
Depending upon the thickness of your bacon and the speed with which your oven achieves hotness, it is likely to take at least 25 minutes. Make a note to yourself about how long it takes it to cook it to the desired degree of doneness. I like mine medium. CC prefers crispy. The nice thing is that you can remove slices as they get where you want them, putting the rest back into the oven to wait their turn. The first time you do it, you will need to start checking at about 20 minuts and continue doing so until you know what the magic time period is in your kitchen.
If you aren’t cooking for a crowd, bake the entire package anyway. Bacon freezes well, and it also keeps in the refrigerator several days, so you save yourself some work by doing a big batch. You’re a smart little thing. And now you know the best method for makin’ bacon!
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