The Biggest Mistake You're Making With Bacon Is Not Cooking Extra

There are plenty of tips out there about how to cook the best bacon, but there's one tip that you may not have heard that often: It's better to cook bacon in large amounts. Yep, even if you're only craving a couple of pieces, the best thing to do is cook bacon in a large batch. There are a few key reasons why this tip makes so much sense. First of all, cooking bacon can be a messy process — especially if you cook it on the stove, where the bacon is prone to splattering — so you may as well cook a large amount and save the leftover pieces so that you don't have to deal with the mess as often.

And speaking of the leftover bacon, there are so many ways to use up the extra pieces. For one, you can simply have it with your breakfast the following morning — what's better than waking up knowing that your bacon is already cooked and (almost) ready to eat? You can also add bacon to a sandwich or a burger, or use it as a topping for a homemade pizza. While those are the most straightforward options, there are plenty of other unexpected ways to use up leftover bacon, such as integrating it into desserts, covering it with chocolate for a salty-sweet treat, or even making bacon jam.

If you like the idea of cooking a lot of bacon at one time, then you'll need to know the best way to cook it. Even if you're used to cooking bacon on the stove, it's actually the oven that will come in handy for making large portions. By using a baking sheet, there's enough space for plenty of bacon slices — Tasting Table's recipe for crispy oven-baked bacon, for one, makes 12 strips of bacon. 

And if you want to make even more bacon than just the 12 strips, the oven makes it easy for you to do so. You can either use two baking sheets or just pop in a second batch after the first is done since the oven will already be properly heated. Plus, if you use the oven, it frees up your hands to prepare the other parts of your meal — there's really no losing when it comes to the oven. 

What's more, if you use foil or parchment paper to line the baking sheet, clean-up becomes a breeze because the lining will soak up all the bacon grease, so, once you remove that, the pan will just need a quick rinse. After you've made your big batch, store the leftover bacon in a sealed bag or in an airtight container. When it comes time to reheat the bacon, you have options. You can use the microwave, the stovetop, or the oven again.