Bacon

Bacon seems to be a big fad right now. It's even in cookies of all places. I don't mind bacon in salads, soups, or on baked potatoes, but I rarely eat it for breakfast. Bacon is typically too salty for me and I hate it when it is undercooked (i.e., slimy or wiggly). I like my bacon crispy! But the real thing I dislike is cooking bacon. Grease splatters all over your kitchen and you can only fit a few pieces in the skillet until they shrink down--it's a big time commitment.

For a while now I've seen instructions for cooking bacon in the oven rather than on the stovetop. Today, for Christmas breakfast, I finally tried cooking bacon in the oven, and it was perfect! The process was very low maintenance: the whole slab of bacon fit on one baking sheet, I ended up with no second-degree burns from grease splatters, and the smell of cooked pork didn't linger in the air or in my hair. And, as my dad, said: "Doesn't it make sense to cook bacon that way? After all, BACON contains the word BAKE!"

I'm sure there are different variations for "baking" bacon, but here's what I did:

1 pkg. thick-cut bacon (regular or low sodium)

Lay strips of bacon in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Cook at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees and continue cooking for about 15 minutes longer, or until the bacon is at the desired crispiness. WATCH CAREFULLY so that the bacon does not burn (oven temperatures may differ). There is no need to flip the bacon during the cooking process. Remove pan from oven and transfer bacon to a towel-lined plate. Serve or wait until cool and crumble.

Notes: Using two temperatures is probably not necessary. For this particular breakfast, French toast was already baking so I just stuck the bacon in the oven at the same time. However, it seems like the lower temperature renders the fat and then the higher temperature crisps up the pork. I just put the bacon directly on the pan, but it seems you could line the pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil to minimize the cleanup process.