I stopped cooking bacon on the stove three years ago and I will never go back. It was a Saturday morning, I was making pancakes, and a grease pop hit my forearm so hard it left a mark for a week. I turned off the burner, opened all the windows to clear the smoke, and googled “bacon oven method” while applying burn cream.

Best kitchen decision I have made. Oven bacon is crispier, more evenly cooked, and does not splatter grease across your entire stovetop. Also, you can cook a whole pack at once instead of six sad strips crammed into a skillet. Here is how.

The setup (two minutes, then walk away)

Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Do not skip the foil — this is what makes cleanup take 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes. The foil catches all the rendered fat.

Place a wire rack on top of the foil-lined sheet and lay your bacon strips across it in a single layer. They can be close together — they will shrink as they cook — but do not overlap them. Overlapping bacon steams instead of crisps.

The temperature and timing

Put the pan in a cold oven, then turn it on to 400°F. Starting cold lets the fat render slowly as the oven heats up. This is the secret to bacon that is crispy all the way through without burnt edges and flabby middles.

Check at 15 minutes. Thin-cut bacon may be done. Thick-cut usually needs 18-22 minutes. You are looking for deep golden brown with small foamy bubbles across the surface. It will crisp up a bit more as it cools, so pull it when it is slightly less done than you think you want.

Thick-cut vs thin-cut timing

Thin-cut (the kind that comes in the flat rectangular package): 15-18 minutes at 400°F. Thick-cut (usually rolled in a round package): 20-24 minutes. If you are not sure, check at 15 and add two minutes at a time.

My favorite is thick-cut applewood smoked bacon. The edges get candied from the natural sugars, and the fat renders into these glassy, shattering strips. I make a whole pound on Sunday and use it all week — crumbled on salads, tucked into sandwiches, chopped into pasta.

What about the grease?

Let the pan cool for 10 minutes, then lift the foil by the corners, pour the grease into a jar, and throw the foil away. Your baking sheet is clean. No scrubbing. No soaking. No grease splatter across four feet of counter space.

Save that bacon fat in a jar in the fridge. It keeps for months and makes the best roasted potatoes you have ever had. Just saying.

The turkey bacon warning

Turkey bacon does not render fat the same way. It gets dry and leathery in the oven. For turkey bacon, stick with the skillet or air fryer at 375°F, 8-10 minutes. Regular pork bacon in the oven though — once you try it, the skillet becomes a backup plan.