100 Great Bacon Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to perfect bacon? ›

1: Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil or parchment paper, and lay out as many bacon strips as will fit snuggly without overlapping. 2: Place in a cold oven. Then heat the oven to 400 degrees F and bake to desired crispness, 25 to 35 minutes. 3: Drain well on a paper-towel-lined platter.

You can keep bacon in the refrigerator at 40 ºF or below for one week. Bacon can also be frozen at 0 ºF for four months (for best quality). For more information about bacon and storage of other bacon products, go to Bacon and Food Safety.

Plan for about 1 pound of bacon for every 3 to 4 people, and know that you can fit about a pound of bacon on a half-sheet pan (a.k.a. about the size of your garden-variety cookie sheet).

Even though it doesn't necessarily come with a mild flavor, bacon is a total blank canvas. With the help of some extra ingredients and spices for your bacon, you can take its original savory, salty, and smoky flavor and enhance it with things like chili powder and coffee, Sriracha, maple syrup, brown sugar, or honey.

Tried and true, this is the way I learned to cook bacon: Lay the strips in a cold skillet, place over medium-low to medium heat, flip and fry until you reach your desired doneness and then transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain.

Bake the bacon in a 400°F oven until well-browned and crisp, this should take between 15 and 18 minutes depending on the thickness of your bacon. To follow Martha's method to a T, you'll need to rotate the sheet pan halfway through.

Don't eat any bacon that's past its “use by” date. The “sell by” date is a little different: properly stored bacon can be eaten up to 7 days past its “sell by” date. Note that properly frozen bacon can last far beyond its "sell by" or "use by" dates.

Once you open that package, bacon's shelf life shortens whether you cook it or not. Raw bacon in a package that has been opened and re-sealed will last up to a week in the fridge, and cooked bacon will last four to five days if it's properly stored. You can also store bacon in the freezer.

The general rule of food safety is to not let raw meat or cooked food sit out for more than 2 hours, and that rule applies to uncooked or cooked bacon. It's wise to be careful with uncooked pork products since they can harbor and grow bacterial pathogens like salmonella and trichinosis.

typically comes in thin slices (about 35 strips per pound), regular slices (16 to 20 slices per pound) or thick slices (12 to 16 slices per pound).

Can you cook a whole pack of bacon at once? ›

Like I said, all you need to do is line a half sheet pan with aluminum foil then place your bacon strips on top in a single layer. You can cook one slice or a whole pack – it doesn't matter!

Turn your oven on to 350. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or tin foil, and then vertically lay out as many pieces of bacon across the paper as you can. I have found that I can usually get 8 or 9 if I really lay them close. They will shrink as they cook, so it's ok to have them touching each other raw.

When the bacon is starting to brown, about 5 minutes, use tongs to flip the slices over, and continue cooking until the bacon is evenly browned and crispy, about 10 minutes total. With the tongs, move the cooked bacon to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain briefly.