Bacon Bacon Bacon

I'm just going to say it: I LOVE bacon.

[Now you know.]

However, I am also VERY picky about my bacon.

Don't get me wrong, I'll eat it however which way it is served, but I have "particular tastes" of what perfect bacon is. So what IS perfect bacon? Perfect bacon is melt-in-your-mouth-crisp-perfection. And while I JUST stated I'd eat bacon any which way it is served, I REALLY detest non-crisp-perfection bacon. If it's close, that is one thing, but if my bacon is still wiggling on my plate ... I'm not touching it. Or I'll touch it to kindly hand it off to whomever in my family would like to digest it.

So how in the WORLD are you suppose to master non-crisp-pefection bacon?!

Well, I finally mastered it. And you want to know the best part? The "secret" has been on the packaging of my bacon all along. WHO KNEW THIS and did NOT share with me?!

The "secret": Bake your bacon in the oven.

Yes, BAKE it. Am I the ONLY one who found this earth-shattering? I had NEVER imagined cooking bacon in the oven, let alone with a cooling rack and cookie sheet. I first came across this way of cooking a few months ago. Unfortunately, it was NOT working. I figured it HAD to be my oven; I mean, the door didn't even close all the way on the top right side. (Yes, JUST the top right part of the door didn't seal completely with the oven; which meant half your meal was crispier than the other half REGARDLESS of what you were cooking and regardless of how many times you turned the food.) We finally decided to purchase a new range and the day before the installation I mastered melt-in-your-mouth-crisp-perfection bacon. In the "broken" oven. All because I decided to follow the instructions on my package of bacon.

First: Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Fahrenheit.

You can ignore the fact that it is 8a.m. and I'm only JUST now getting to making breakfast.

What You Need:
-shallow baking pan
-cookie cooling rack
-BACON!

First, take a shallow baking pan/cookie sheet out.

Then, place your cookie cooling rack right on top.

Next, lay your bacon across in a neat (not REALLY necessary), non-crowded (VERY important) rows.

Notice none of the pieces are overlapping.

As you finish unloading your package of bacon, you may want to adjust your pieces. The package of bacon I used this morning is one of those where I would have had one slice left by its lonesome and I was NOT about to leave a single piece of bacon out, wait for the rest to cook, and then cook a single piece by itself. Not in the middle of summer. In the desert. So I adjusted all my slices and ended up with this beauty:

Although, let's face it, COOKED bacon is FAR more beautiful than uncooked. And twenty minutes later, I had BEAUTIFUL bacon.

See that far, left piece. THAT is melt-in-your-mouth-crisp-perfection. Same with the third one in from the left. Those are the pieces you take straight from the oven and munch on while you wait just a tad for your pancakes to finish cooking so by the time the pancakes are done, you have MORE melt-in-your-mouth-crisp-perfection bacon to enjoy!


Bacon PERFECTION using the oven. WHY didn't I know about this sooner?!?!