Line Your Sheet Pan With Aluminum Foil For The Crispiest Bacon

For many, breakfast isn't complete unless there's a side of bacon on the plate — a crispy side of bacon, to be more specific. If you're someone who needs your bacon to be extra crispy, then you need to know the easiest way to achieve that crisp with very little effort.

While your first thought may be to cook bacon on the stovetop for quick convenience, it will cook just as well in the oven. In order to guarantee that your bacon comes out of the oven nice and crisp, all you need is one thing — and you probably already have it in your kitchen: aluminum foil.

Make sure to line your baking sheet with aluminum foil before placing the bacon on top. With this method, the bacon will cook evenly the foil will prevent the bacon from sticking to the baking sheet, which is the last thing you want when there is fresh, oven-cooked bacon in front of you, begging to be eaten.

Why the oven-foil combo is the best method for crispy bacon

The main reason you want to choose the method of cooking bacon on foil in the oven is that the foil will ensure the bacon cooks evenly and that both sides will get crispy. Plus, as the bacon renders its own fat while baking slowly, burning will be prevented. Additionally, the foil makes your clean-up extremely easy because you can simply throw out the foil when you're done, then just rinse off the pan and it'll be ready to be used for your next cooking endeavor (which may just be another batch of crispy bacon). 

Even if you run out of foil, it's still worth using the oven for the convenience of it – you can make a much bigger batch and, while the bacon is cooking, you can focus on preparing other breakfast dishes. Tasting Table's recipe for crispy oven-baked bacon calls for an 18-minute cooking time, which gives you plenty of time to whip up pancakes, eggs, or any other preferred breakfast food. The bacon will still get crispy in the oven without the foil, but it likely won't cook as evenly, so you'll need to remember to flip it halfway through and you may have to deal with parts of the bacon being more tender.