Alton Brown's Genius Paper Towel Trick For Easy Bacon Cleanup

Food science guru Alton Brown has no shortage of tips on how to take your morning meal to the next level, from a simple hack that will whip up the creamiest scrambled eggs to an easy trick to take your coffee to the next level. And if you're looking for a way to avoid spending time scrubbing at the sink after baking your bacon, he has that covered, too. Simply place paper towels in a sheet pan, spray them with a little bit of water, and cook the bacon on a wire rack over the top. The paper towels will soak up the grease and make cleanup a breeze.

When roasting bacon at 400f try lining the pan with paper towels. They soak up the fat and prevent smoking. pic.twitter.com/X1u9maUT

— Alton Brown (@altonbrown) November 3, 2012

Brown notes that the other benefit of using paper towels in the pan when making bacon is that it can minimize the chance that the grease will smoke. While bacon is typically cooked in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the smoke point of the grease ranges from 325 to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you want to avoid starting your day to the tune of your smoke alarm, Brown's paper towel trick will work for that, too.

There are advantages to sizzling up bacon strips on the stovetop, like being able to easily monitor your bacon while it cooks and hanging on to the bacon grease to later use in biscuits, vegetables, and salad dressings. However, using the oven to cook bacon is an easy way to make a big batch when you're feeding a crowd, meal prepping, or have a recipe that calls for a large quantity. It's also significantly less messy, eliminating the need to clean up splattered grease. Plus, the hands-off method requires less attention and frees up a burner so that you can make other dishes like scrambled eggs and omelets, pancakes, or French toast.

Roasting bacon in the oven is incredibly simple. Once you prepare the pan with paper towels like Alton Brown suggests, just space your slices of bacon out so that there's minimal room between them. Pop the pan in a cold oven, turn up the heat, and then go about your other business in the kitchen until it's done.

It's best to start with a cold oven to ensure your bacon cooks perfectly, allowing the bacon time to come up to temperature along with the oven. This way, the fat melts more slowly and the meat cooks more evenly, so you wind up with scrumptious slices that are neither too fatty nor too crispy. For this method to work best, be sure to start with bacon that has sat at room temperature for 10 or 15 minutes.

When you're making bacon in the oven, you'll need a sheet pan, of course. But what's key is to make sure that the pan is rimmed. First, this will prevent any stray grease from spilling in your oven or on the floor when you take it out. Plus, it will help to keep the rack stable in the pan.

Finally, put more paper towels to work once you're finished baking your bacon. Place several paper towels on a plate and use tongs to transfer the hot bacon, so any remaining grease can be absorbed. This gives the bacon a few minutes to rest and also ensures that your meat is perfectly crisp and crunchy.