Don't Make This Easy Mistake When Cooking Bacon In The Oven

Cooking bacon in the oven has many advantages over the standard stove-top skillet. Baking bacon is a hands-off method that'll save you from cleaning the messy splatter of bacon grease while also allowing you to cook a large batch for the whole family. Laying strips of bacon on a baking sheet to cook in the oven is a fairly fool-proof method, but there are a few mistakes to avoid. One easy mistake that may not be too obvious is cooking different cuts of bacon on the same baking sheet.

If you've ever roasted vegetables, you probably know that you should cut them to be roughly the same size for even cooking. The same rule applies to bacon. Bacon cuts encompass numerous varieties, each with different thicknesses — and thereby different cooking times. While it might be tempting to throw bacon strips and lardons on the same baking sheet to save time, this would be a grave mistake. Thinner cuts of bacon will cook much faster than thicker cuts. Even thick and thin-cut bacon strips require different cooking times. The thinner cuts of bacon will burn by the time the thicker cuts are ready. 

You can always put each type of bacon on different baking sheets if using the same cooking temperatures. You can place different batches on separate oven racks, setting two separate timers so you can pull the thinner cuts out first.

There are plenty of unique cuts of bacon to throw in the oven — separately, of course! The thick or thin strips of bacon you're most familiar with are known as streaky bacon and come from the belly of the pig. However, bacon can come from all different parts of a pig's body. For example, buckboard bacon comes from the pork butt, Canadian bacon comes from the loin, and guanciale comes from jowls.

All of the different cuts of bacon have distinct shapes, textures, and flavors. Cuts like pancetta and speck are cured with spices and herbs, while Chinese bacon uses soy sauce, sugar, and star anise for an especially sweet and savory profile. Lardons are thick, salt-cured cubes of pork belly that are becoming more and more popular stateside.

Like streaky bacon, many of these cuts are commonly fried in a skillet. But you can also try baking them for a more mess-free cooking experience that'll instill crisp edges and chewy centers. Plus, you can use different cuts for far more dishes than your standard continental breakfast. Pancetta and guanciale are great pizza and pasta carbonara additions, for example.