A Secret to the Best Bacon Ever (Kitchn)

I think we can agree that crispy, smoky bacon is one of life's greatest pleasures. However, standing over a hot stove dodging sputtering bacon grease is not. Here is how we can have the best of both worlds: a hands-free, hassle-free method for cooking perfect bacon, all in the oven.

I’ve cooked my bacon this way for several years. It’s easy and simple. I like simple breakfasts.

I like thick cut bacon but my family (except for my vegetarian wife) prefers the thinner slices. The bacon expert in the house, my daughter Kiran, says the thin slices cook more crisp. I’m still practicing and developing my technique for cooking super crispy bacon while preventing burning. But I think she’s correct; the thicker cuts will produce chewier bacon while the thinner cuts will produce crisper bacon. When I choose bacon, I look for a nice blend of meat and fat, with a little more meat than fat.

Every year we take part in my wife’s family’s version of the white elephant game. My wife doesn’t believing in wasting money so we always try to buy something that still has practical use. Better yet, something we would use ourselves. My wife and I are good bargain shoppers on Amazon.com and find it easy to find something within the defined dollar limit. One year we found two items we liked, an electric breakfast sandwich maker and an electric waffle maker. Both met the dollar limit. We bought both. We kept the waffle maker and won back the sandwich maker.

One Thomas’ English Muffin fits perfectly within the sandwich maker. I learned how to make egg, cheese and sausage sandwiches in three minutes with minimal clean up. Just separate the English muffin layers and layer on the fixings: egg, cheese, sausage. At first, I put the whole egg directy into the top layer. But in the last few months I’ve experimented with whisking a a tablespoon of heavy cream into the egg. It produces a light fluffy (and less chewy) egg layer for the sandwich.