Bake the Bacon

This blog by HottyToddy.com Editor-in-Chief Emily Gatlin originally appeared at FoodRiot.com and appears here with permission.

Secrets don’t make friends. But revealing bacon secrets makes friends with errbody.

It’s the time of year when you sweat like a fat kid running after an ice cream truck. I don’t know about y’all, but the last thing I want to do is stand over a hot stove and fry bacon.

Growing up, we had one of those really cool trays made for microwaving bacon. The grease would flow like a magic river to one side of the tray, and then we’d scoop it out and save it for later.

Sorry, where was I? I spaced out for a second thinking about bacon grease salad dressing.

I don’t have a fancy microwave tray for my bacon, and it doesn’t taste the same as straight-up fried bacon. Last night, I did a little bacon experiment with my BLTs.

Are you ready for the best kept secret to makin’ bacon?

BAKE THE BACON.

Seriously. Spread it out on a cookie sheet that has sides (don’t bother with the broiler pan with the drip thing on top), set your oven to 350 degrees for 30 minutes, and BAKE. THE. BACON. I had so much bacon on the cookie sheet that they were touching each other like little bacon snuggles and they came out as a CRISPY SHEET OF BACON (!!!!) so I just broke off a hunk (!!!!) and put it on my sandwich. You should do the paper towel trick to soak up a little bit of the grease, but you can still save the runoff bacon grease for later.

You can thank me later.

– Emily Gatlin, Editor-in-Chief, HottyToddy.com