If you are looking for how to cook bacon in the microwave, you found it! We cover almost every way to cook bacon in the microwave! Including methods on how to cook bacon in the microwave, both with special microwave bacon cooker gadgets and how to cook bacon in the microwave just using things you already have in your kitchen. We tested several popular microwave bacon cookers and just using a plate and paper towels and go through which worked the best and which we didn’t love and how to use each one.
How to Cook Bacon in the Microwave
I cook bacon quite frequently for my family. Since we are a busy family with little ones, I am always trying to find the quickest and easiest method for making things that creates the least mess! I quit making bacon on the stove top quite a while ago just due to the mess, and what I discovered was that you can get bacon every bit as good with way less clean up using other methods.
My go to method for a long time has been making bacon in the oven. You can see all of my tips on how to cook bacon in the oven here. But sometimes when I just need a few slices, or I need bacon fast I cook it in the microwave. I grew up with my parents making it this way, and have gotten away from it in the past few years.
I decided that I was going to do a little experiment and see how cooking bacon int the microwave compared to cooking it with other methods. Once I started looking into it more I found that there are SO MANY gadgets out there for cooking bacon in the microwave! I had no idea!
So armed with the knowledge I had, and an Amazon cart full of gadgets to try, I spent a day making bacon (there are worse ways to spend your time, ha!) and got to the bottom of the best ways to microwave bacon. How to make it crispy. How much to make. How long to cook bacon in the microwave. And which microwave bacon cooker is the best.
Of course these are all only me and my team’s opinion, but hopefully it will save you some time and get you of to a great start making your own bacon in the microwave.
If you have some tips or methods I missed for making bacon in the microwave, please leave them in the comments below so I can try it out! Thanks for the help!
Pros & Cons of Cooking Bacon in the Microwave
Every cooking method has pro’s and cons, but in general here are the things that we really liked about using the microwave to cook bacon:
- Shorter cooking time
- Easy to cook just a couple of slices
- Able to get bacon crispy
- Can cover to reduce mess
- If there is a mess, in general microwaves are easier to wipe down than an oven or stovetop.
- No special equipment required (however it can be helpful depending on what you want!)
Here are a few downsides to cooking bacon in the microwave:
- Not able to cook as much at a time, if you need a lot of bacon, you will probably be better off making bacon in the oven
- Not able to sear edges
- Some methods bear uneven cooking- Crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle
How Long to Cook Bacon in the Microwave
One of the main reasons that cooking bacon in the microwave is awesome, is that you can get crispy bacon in a fraction of the time it takes using other methods. When cooking bacon in the microwave, you have a few factors that will impact the cooking time:
- Wattage of the microwave– This is the amount of power you microwave cooks with. You should be able to find the wattage on a sticker inside the door.
- How much bacon you are cooking– If you are cooking 1-2 slices, it will cook much faster than if you are cooking 6-9 slices at a time.
- Thickness of bacon– Bacon comes in varying thicknesses and the thicker the bacon, the longer it will take to cook.
- How crispy you want the bacon– The crispier you want the bacon, the longer you will cook it.
We tested 4 different methods to cooking bacon in the microwave and each varied a bit. On average we cooked the bacon 6-7 minutes in my 1000 watt microwave to get a nice crispy result. I will tell you the exact method and time we used in each section below.
How to Microwave Bacon on a Plate
The great thing about cooking bacon in the microwave is that you don’t HAVE to have any special equipment. There are some perks to it I will go over below, but if you have a microwave safe plate and some paper towels, you have everything you need to get cooking.
Here is method we used to cook the bacon in the microwave:
- Find a microwave safe plate (look for designation on the bottom of the dish.)
- Line the plate with 3-4 paper towels.
- Lay bacon on the paper towels not touching. You can overlap it if you have to, but we found that even though you are still able to cook it well while overlapped, it does tend to stick together in places that it is overlapped, so avoid it if you can.
- Cover with an additional paper towel to reduce mess.
- Microwave for 4-5 minutes. Check the bacon and continue to cook for 30 sec-1 minute increments until it is to the desired crispiness.
Note: Be careful handling because the bacon is very hot when it comes out of the microwave and the grease can burn you!
In the end we cooked six slices of bacon and it took us 7 minutes to cook them to consistently crispy in my 1000 watt microwave.
Thoughts on microwaving bacon on a plate:
The good…. the bad….. the ugly…. Really, it is mostly good. Just a few things to think about.
- We love that you don’t need anything special and that clean up is super easy with this method. Just remove the bacon and toss the paper towels!
- It was hard to cook the bacon evenly. It wasn’t a huge issue but seemed like the center of the plate of bacon was always a bit less cooked than the edges.
- Of all the methods we tried we felt like this one was one of the greasiest. The paper towels do absorb some of the grease, but with the bacon we used, there was just more grease than the paper towels could absorb and they seemed to be swimming in grease at the end. Some of it can be blotted away, but you do need to be very careful.
- On that note, if you like the flavor and texture that the bacon gets from cooking in the grease, you might prefer this method over others.
- Don’t over lap the bacon. It is hard to cook more than 4-5 slices at a time using this method since you don’t want them to overlap. If you are cooking a couple of slices this works well, if you want more slices, you might want to use a microwave bacon cooker.
How to Cook Bacon with a Microwave Bacon Cooker
Bacon cookers are not necessary to cook bacon in the microwave, however, they can make it easier to cook more, less messy, or provide a way to help them cook more evenly.
We tried out 3 of the most popular styles of microwave bacon cookers to let you know our thoughts. I bought each of these on Amazon myself, so there is no bias here, just our experiences with how they worked for use when we tested them.
Microwave Bacon Cooker 1: The Original Bacon Wave
The first bacon cooker we tested was The Original Bacon Wave
. It is under $10 and over all worked really well. Here is the run down on how it work.
How to Microwave bacon with the Original Bacon Wave
- Load the bacon up by arranging each piece in the tray standing on it’s side.
- Stick the skewers through each end to hold the bacon in place while cooking.
- Optional (but not really): Cover the entire tray with a paper towel to reduce splatter.
- Microwave according to their chart. We made 14 pieces in our 1000 watt microwave in 8.5 minutes.
- Remove skewers and serve!
Here are what we thought the pros and cons were to this model.
Pros:
- Cooked the most bacon of any of the tested methods at up to 14 slices at a time.
- Did a pretty good job of keeping the bacon out of the grease.
- Held the bacon straight, so there was the least shrinkage of any cooking method. If you are looking for flat bacon without much curling, this one is for you!
- Able to get crispy bacon.
Cons:
- We had some trouble getting it to cook evenly. The center was always a little less done than the sides, however we were able to get it all crispy at some point.
- Since you load the tray up and then have to put a skewer through the ends to hold it all in place, we felt it took a bit longer to get it all together. The trade off was that you can do more bacon than the other methods so it may not be more overall time depending on how much bacon you need.
- This thing is not super fun to clean, but I believe it is dishwasher safe so that helps if you aren’t a nut like me that pre-washes everything very thoroughly.
- When you remove the bacon it is nice and flat which we liked, but it also had some “strings” from where it stuck a touch to the bacon cooker or the skewers, which isn’t super visually appealing but doesn’t effect taste.
Overall if you want to cook a lot of bacon in the microwave at one time, if you are looking for something to make bacon that stays flat, or if you want to keep it from cooking in the grease, this could be a good option for you.
Microwave Bacon Cooker 2: The Presto Power Crisp
The second bacon cooker we tried was the Presto Power Crisp
. Spoiler alert! This one turned out to be our favorite! It seemed to have the best combination of hitting the mark on the things we thought were most important. First let’s go through how this bacon cooker is used.
How to Microwave bacon with the Presto Power Crisp
- Assemble the Power Crisp by inserting the plastic racks into the base.
- Lay desired number of bacon strips (up to about 9) over the racks, not touching.
- Cover with paper towel if desired.
- Microwave according to directions. We cooked 9 slices of bacon to crisp in 6 minutes with our 1000 watt microwave.
- Lift off immediately with a knife and transfer to paper towels or a plate.
Here are what we thought were the pro’s and con’s of the Power Crisp.
Pros:
- Bacon cooked most evenly in the microwave of any method! We put it in the microwave as directed and it came out perfectly cooked! What’s not to love!?
- Grease drained from bacon exceptionally well. Since the bacon basically hangs down and there is plenty of room below it, the grease can completely drain without touching the bacon.
- Cooks up to 9 pieces which was one of the greater amounts of the methods we tried.
- There was no sticking and enough room for that many slices without overlap which was nice.
- Once you are done, clean up was easy, and the pieces are dishwasher safe. It also comes apart so it can store flat and compactly.
Cons:
- The bacon was pretty shriveled on the ends. It doesn’t effect the taste but if you are looking for flat bacon, this probably isn’t for you.
- If you don’t remove the bacon immediately after cooking it will stay in the bent shape and crack into two pieces if you try to straighten it.
- This method was also slightly messier in the microwave than other methods since you can cover it with a paper towel but it doesn’t really drape completely over the whole thing.
Overall we loved how evenly the bacon cooked, how quickly it cooked, the amount we were able to cook and the fact that the grease drained so well. Those things made this our top pick for Microwave Bacon Cooker!
Microwave Bacon Cooker 2: The Bacon Tray- Prep Solutions Bacon Grill with Cover
Our last method we tested for cooking bacon in the microwave was a pretty basic bacon tray called the Prep Solutions Bacon Grill with Cover
. The Bacon grill is a tray that has some grooves in it to ideally draw the grease away from the bacon and a vented cover to reduce the mess. This guy got the job done, and all in all seemed very similar to the method of just using a plate with paper towels. Here is the method we used on this one.
How to Microwave bacon with the Bacon Tray
- Lay the bacon on the tray so that it is not touching.
- Cover the tray with the vented lid.
- Microwave per package directions. We were able to cook 6 slices in 6 minutes in my 1000 watt microwave.
- Remove bacon from tray to paper towels or a plate.
Here are the ups and downs of using the tray method to cook bacon in the microwave:
Pros:
- We loved the cover. It proved effective at containing the mess.
- We did think the bacon cooked fairly evenly in this device.
- If you only need a couple of slices it works well.
- Stores flat.
Cons:
- If you need more than a few slices you will have to cook multiple batches.
- The bacon was swimming in the grease at the end of cooking. There was not deep enough grooves to keep it seperate.
- It is not super easy to clean. The grooves make it harder but it is dishwasher safe.
- There isn’t much room and if the slices touch they will stick together and pull pieces off when you try to seperate them.
Overall, we think you are better off just using a plate than this guy because it will cook about the same, but you have less clean up on a plate. If you do choose this one, at least the cover is handy and it stores easily!
How to Store Cooked Bacon
Once your bacon is cooked, it is time to eat! If you have leftovers you have a couple of options. You can store it in an airtight container or zip top bag,
- In the refrigerator for 3-4 days
- In the freezer for up to a month
How to Reheat Bacon in the Microwave
The great thing about bacon is that it reheats wonderfully, so you can pop out a slice or two and just put it on a paper towel in the microwave for 30 sec-1 minute and you have piping hot and crispy bacon just like fresh!
That was a whole lot of information. I hope you found something helpful! If you have another favorite method for cooking bacon in the microwave, make sure to let me know in the comments so I can give it a try! Or if you try out one of these methods, let me know how it goes for you!
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How to Cook Bacon in the Microwave
Ingredients
- 6 slices of bacon
- 5 paper towels
Instructions
- Line a microwave safe plate with 3-4 paper towels.
- Lay bacon on the paper towels so that it is not touching.
- Cover with an additional paper towel to reduce mess from splatter.
- Microwave for 4-5 minutes. Check the bacon and continue to cook for 30 sec-1 minute increments until it is to the desired crispiness.
- In the end we cooked six slices of bacon and it took us 7 minutes to cook them to consistently crispy in my 1000 watt microwave.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
(Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.)
Vic says
Looking for a recipe, not a thesis.
Kimber says
Well since it is called the ultimate guide, I try to be thorough and give my readers a variety of options so that the post is really useful. I am sure Google offers other search results if this wasn’t what you were looking for.
Jill says
Thanks so much! It was just was I was looking for. All the bacon cookers seem very similar. Your attention to detail is appreciated.
Gwen Johnson says
Thank you for all the good information. And, thank you for the time you spent to help all of us.
John says
Really good easy to read guide. Just what i was looking for. Because mine will be joined with a fried egg inbetween 2 bits of bread i don’t need straight bacon so the plate and paper towels will work fne for me ?
Peace
Kristi says
What a nice review! Nuking bacon sure is a timesaver. On behalf of breakfasters everywhere, thank you for testing all these gadgets. Glad to know the plate method is viable.
Edward Hellwig says
I don’t remember the exact details, but I do remember cooking lots of bacon on a microwave safe plate, or just a paper plate in a 1200 watt microwave
We used a paper plate covered with 6 or more paper towels(or just 8 or more paper towels), then a layer of bacon (not touching), then another layer of three or four paper towels, then a layer of bacon, then continue till you get the desired amount of bacon. We were cooking breakfast for 6-8 family members. Then cover the top layer of bacon with another three to four sheets of paper, & cover with a microwave vented cover or if you don’t have one, just add a couple more paper towels on top.
With a rotating microwave or a rotator, this gave us great bacon in 10 to 12 minutes depending on the amount of bacon & layers & if I recall correctly, it was very evenly cooked. Of course the last few minutes, it was checked every 30 to 60 seconds.
It uses a lot of paper towels, but it was worth it!!
Darlene Kells says
All thou i liked reading ur post there is one way you didn’t try which works for me. I take a dinner size plate then invert the next smaller sz plate and put it ontop, then i lay 4-5 strips of bacon across the plate put a paper towel ontop then lay another 4-5 stripes opposite from the 1st set of stripes. This allows the bacon grease to run down and onto the dinner plate and under the inverted plate and the paper towel stacking keeps the bacon from sticking together. Time is the same depending on ur microwave.
Miriam says
I’d avoid the Presto. I liked the way it cooked bacon, too. My first one cracked in the center of the base and leaked grease all over. (I do cook bacon almost every day, so it got a lot of use). I decided to buy 2 more, so if one went I would still have another. I threw the 2nd away before the crack got big enough to leak. I can see I’ll be throwing the 3rd one away soon as a crack has started on it. That’s 3 units in less than 2 years. If they could solve the cracking problem, it would be the best microwave bacon cooker you could buy!
Marie says
Thanks for these great tips! I’m leaving a comment for all the chewy bacon lovers like me (I despise crispy bacon)! I found by only cooking it for 4½ minutes makes it perfectly chewy. I also did 5 minutes and it was a little more done than I preferred it but still good and chewy.