Goodbye Soggy Oven-Baked Bacon (Thanks, Martha Stewart)

Bacon is a singularly perfect treat in how salty, savory, and rich it is. While it's easy to cook, it's hard to get the right level of crispiness without splatters. In truth, the best way to cook up crunchy bacon with absolutely no mess involves putting it in the oven, not in a skillet. Celebrity home decor and cooking entrepreneur Martha Stewart also thinks so, with one specific addendum. Her way to get crispy, easy bacon is to put it on a metal rack over a baking sheet.

Stewart has offered up many interesting food opinions over the years, including what she thought about prison food. In this case, she suggests a wire rack with a single layer of bacon strips on it because it allows the bacon to cook away from its pooled fat, which is caught by the pan below. You don't need to flip it, since the wire rack allows heat to get to both sides of the bacon, and keeps the grease from spattering around the individual pieces.

Simply preheat your oven to 400 degrees, then line a baking pan with parchment paper, place a wire rack on it, and lay out your bacon evenly without any overlap. Cook the bacon to your preferred crispness and place it on paper towels to catch any remaining grease while it cools. As far as the leftover bacon grease in the pan, Martha Stewart suggests saving it in a container so you can use it for future cooking endeavors.

Some people don't believe in the merits of oven-baked bacon, but there are a few reasons Martha Stewart's method works better than pan-frying. The fat and meat parts of bacon cook at different rates which causes pan-bacon to curl as the meat over-crisps while the fat is still beginning to render. The result is soggy bacon with overcooked parts, which doesn't happen when it's suspended on a rack. Ovens are big enough to cook large batches, unlike pans, without uneven heating. They also work better for sweetened and flavored bacons whose sugars would be more likely to burn and stick in a skillet. You can even add a few ingredients to create sweet and spicy candied bacon in the oven. Most of all, the wire rack method allows an entire strip of bacon to get evenly crispy without much effort on your part.

There are still a few mistakes you can make when cooking bacon in the oven that you should watch out for. Because the oven cooks all sides of the wire-rack bacon at once, you need to keep a close eye on it so it doesn't become overcooked. It shouldn't need more than 18 minutes in the oven. Use a baking sheet with a rim because overflowing bacon grease in your oven is going to turn into serious smoke. When storing bacon fat, Martha Stewart urges you to place it in a jar in the fridge or else it can go bad over time.