Stove Top Vs Oven: What's The Best Way To Cook Crispy Bacon?

It seems like everyone's got a trick to cooking "perfect" crispy bacon, whether it's whipping out Meemaw's Lodge cast iron, firing up the toaster oven, or even grilling in the backyard. We covered the great debate on oven vs. air fryer in terms of which made cooking bacon easier, and the oven won hands-down. But how about oven against pan frying for the crispiest results? The stovetop is the classic way to cook bacon, but would you say that it's the best? The defense rests, Your Honor, and the verdict is in: oven-cooking bacon is not only neater and more efficient than a pan on the stovetop, but the results are crispier as well. In short, oven bacon is better by any metric.

Pan-frying bacon has history and tradition on its side, but it's not a great way to do things if you have another option. First of all, grease is going to splatter everywhere, resulting in a need for extensive cleanup. Furthermore, it's too hard to batch-cook bacon in a pan: you can only cook a precious few strips at a time, and you risk the pan being too hot for subsequent rounds, risking an unappealing burn. Most importantly, it's hard to get a good crisp on the bacon due to the overwhelming amount of grease in the pan. Oven bacon, on the other hand, allows for cooking a whole package at once (hands-free!), and, with the right technique (elevating the bacon above the pan on an oven-safe rack), results in bacon that reliably turns out crispy and delicious every single time. If you know what temp to bake bacon, you're halfway to a flawless breakfast.

Internet denizens are especially hyped about crispy bacon prepared in the oven. One Redditor laid the ground rules succinctly: "I exclusively use an oven to prepare my bacon. Put the bacon on a cooking sheet, pop into a still cold oven, then turn the temp up to 400 [degrees Fahrenheit], and bake for 20 minutes or so until the bacon has reached the desired look. I find that by lining the pan in tin foil and utilizing a low-profile cookie cooling rack does a fantastic job at keeping my bacon from being covered in grease and minimizing clean up."

Over on the r/unpopular opinions subreddit, a commenter expressed an opinion that actually turned out to be pretty darn popular: "At first I thought [my wife] preferred baking [bacon], rather than frying it on the stove like a normal human being, because of the mess it makes. But no, she said it's because it tastes a lot better." The top response? "Tell your wife she's right, then kiss her." Meanwhile, on a forum dedicated to cooking, another poster had a more graphically-described revelation: "This last weekend, while frying bacon on the stove, I realized I was basically standing in a war zone [...] After one too many oil burns, I switched to baking it in the oven, and now I'll never go back." In short, both cooking pros and home cooking amateurs have discovered the gustatory and hygienic joys of bacon in the oven. Ourselves, we love our bacon crispy and not soaked in oil, so using the oven is a no-brainer.