Stop fighting a losing battle with a greased stove. When you buy high-quality bacon, you want the perfect crunch without the 20-minute clean. The real problem with pan frying isn’t the taste, though. That’s what comes along with the dirty spots that mark your skin and kitchen walls.
In an effort to find the best, cleanest way to make bacon for Sunday brunch or a BLT, I tried several methods, including the stove, oven and air fryer.
Turns out I was doing it all wrong.
Frying pan
- Cooking time: 10 minutes
- Suffering: 8/10
- How much bacon: 7-8 strips
I grew up on fried bacon but my experiments revealed that there is a better way.
This is how I grew up cooking bacon and it’s really good. It doesn’t take much skill to fry bacon in a pan, although almost every cake I’ve ever made sends a healthy splatter over the stove. In extreme cases, that infernal oil lands directly on my skin or my clothes, presenting two separate but equally aggravating problems.
Pan-fried bacon soaks up a ton of grease, which is why many turn to paper towels to drain it after cooking. Frying these pieces of pork belly is usually done by rolling them into small balls. While that doesn’t affect the taste, it can make for a less than ideal presentation.
I feel splatter bombs looking at this picture.
Another drawback of cooking bacon in a frying pan is its limited capacity. A 10-inch frying pan can only hold 7 standard-sized strips of bacon at a time, although you can add more as it shrinks during cooking.
Then there is the matter of cleaning said pan after use. It is not recommended to put a lot of cookware in the dishwasher, so you will have to manage that greased area yourself.
The oven
- Cooking time: 18 minutes
- Suffering: 6/10
- How much bacon: 10-12 strips
Oven bacon is best for cooking large batches.
Although it requires more preparation, oven-cooked bacon has clear advantages over pan-frying. For one, there is little concern about capacity, as a standard cookie sheet or baking tray can hold almost a full package of bacon, making the oven ideal for cooking large quantities.
Using a baking tray and rack allows the oil to drain. That makes the results crispier, with less oil, but creates a headache when it’s time to clean up. Cookie sheets and baking trays don’t go well in the sink, and there’s often enough grease that you don’t want to use in your dishwasher.
You can line a baking tray with aluminum foil, but it takes a lot of foil, and most of the time, bacon grease finds its way under or through it.
Bacon cooked in the oven takes longer than bacon cooked in a frying pan — about 18 minutes — but if you plan to cook the whole package and don’t want to lean on the stove while cooking, your oven is your best bet.
Air fryer
- Cooking time: 7 minutes
- Suffering: 4/10
- How much bacon: 6-7 strips
Because of its quick cooking time and hassle-free operation, the air fryer is my new favorite way to make bacon.
There’s almost nothing I won’t try to make in stock but, surprisingly, this is my first attempt at bacon. I was expecting a faster cooker, because air fryers heat most foods about 25% faster than a regular oven.
The air fryer has proven to be my favorite way to make bacon, with one major caveat (more on that later). Mine favorite glass-bowl air fryer cook those strips for about 7 minutes at 375°F — faster than an oven and a frying pan. Because air fryers include a crisping rack, the grease naturally drips into the pan below, so there was no need to clean it with a lasagna paper towel.
The grill tray drained the excess fat while the bacon was cooking.
The bacon turned out crispy and kept its shape better than when fried in a pan.
And the pollution was minimal. Because the cooking chamber of the air fryer fits easily in my sink, I was able to wash it in seconds with a sponge and soapy water. My glass air fryer is also dishwasher safe so another option would be to wipe off the oil and stick it all in the dishwasher. dishwasher.
Air fryer bacon is really crispy.
Major warning: Power
I use modesty 4-quart air fryer so I can fit about six sheets at a time. That’s a lot for me and my partner, but if I were making bacon for a group, I’d have to cook in batches or invest a lot of money. a large model.
That means…
Not having to guard a sizzling, splattering pan or negotiate a greased baking tray pulled from the oven is worth bringing back another time to feed a group. There’s also no heating required, unlike an oven, and the speed and cleanliness gave the hot air an edge over other methods I’ve tried.
