Bacon revisted

We love bacon in our house.  This is really no secret.  We even own a cookbook entirely devoted to bacon.

Yet, as much as we love bacon, preparing it on the stove top is a messy process.  The end product is never consistently crisp and the slices are usually curled on top of themselves.  After years of less than crispy bacon with grease splatters all over the stove, I just tried to skip making bacon - until I practiced baking bacon.  I'm sold!

A family member showed me how to prepare bacon in the oven and I was kind of convinced.  Becky Higgins is a blogger who I follow and she posted about this method.  Her post gave me some confidence to try it myself.

Here is my take on baking bacon.

1.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Place the bacon on the foil in a single layer.

 2.  Place the baking sheet in the cold oven.  Set the oven to 425 degrees and allow the bacon to cook while it heats.  When our oven reaches 425 degrees, I check the bacon and continue to check it every few minutes until it is the desired crispiness.

Lesson learned:  do not check the bacon when the oven reaches 425 degrees and then tell yourself that you are just going to scrapbook for a minute or two more.  I did this.  I forgot the bacon.  I created a lot of smoke and some extra crispy bacon.

This story will explain why the photo above have more pieces of bacon and they are closer together.  I had to do another batch to get the after picture.

3.  Use a spatula to remove the bacon from the baking sheet.  Place the bacon on a plate with paper towels and blot off any excess grease.  The bacon will crisp up just a bit more as it cools.

4.  Clean up is a snap.  Just remove the foil and dispose of the grease.  Wash your baking sheet and you are set.

This method is great for making crispy bacon you can crumble for other recipes.  We enjoyed bacon and tomato sandwiches for lunch today with bacon from the oven - a perfect summer lunch.