The best way to prepare bacon is neither a skillet nor an oven. Here’s the tool I use

I love cooking tricks and shortcuts, but only when they don’t sacrifice the end result. Microwave boiled eggs and Reverse fried steak They are two such examples. Recently, I discovered the trick to making bacon, and now it’s the only way I’ll cook things.

Bacon isn’t hard to cook, thanks to all that delicious fat that runs through it. However, it’s messy — especially when cooked on the stove, as it splatters grease onto anything within a few feet, including the person cooking it.

I previously switched from stove to Oven approachbut the rate at which I Use my air fryer Made me wonder if this might be the key to quick and easy bacon.

To find out, I ran a test to compare bacon made in frying panthe oven and Air fryer. My goal was simple: figure out the kitchen tool that makes crispy slices with the least amount of work and cleanup.

I also gave the microwave a chance: while it technically worked, the bacon often came out dry or chewy, so I took it off.

Here’s how the three main contenders fared.

frying pan

• Cooking time: 10 minutes
• Trouble: 8/10
• How much bacon?: 7-8 slices

This is how I grew up cooking bacon and it’s just as good. There’s not a lot of skill needed to fry bacon in a pan, although almost every batch I’ve made sends a healthy drizzle over the stove. In more unfortunate cases, this infernal grease lands directly on my skin or clothes, presenting two different but equally dangerous problems.

Fried bacon absorbs a large amount of grease, which is why many resort to paper towels to drain it after cooking. Frying these strips of pork belly also tends to curl them into little balls of bacon. While this has no effect on the taste, it can provide a suboptimal presentation.

Another disadvantage of cooking bacon in a skillet is its limited capacity. A 10-inch skillet can only hold 7 medium-sized slices of bacon at a time, although you can add more as they shrink during cooking.

Then there’s the matter of cleaning said pan after use. Most cookware is not recommended for putting in the dishwasher, so you’ll have to deal with this greasy surface yourself.

oven

• Cooking time: 18 minutes
• Trouble: 6/10
• How much bacon?: 10-12 bars

While it does involve more prep, Oven bacon It has obvious advantages over frying. First, there’s a little concern about capacity, as a standard cookie sheet or baking tray can hold almost an entire package of bacon, making the oven ideal for cooking large quantities.

Using a baking tray and rack allows the grease to drip to the bottom. This makes the results crisper and less greasy, but causes a headache when it’s time to clean up. Cookie sheets and baking trays don’t fit well in the sink, and there’s usually enough grease that you don’t want to run them through the dishwasher.

You can line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, but it takes a lot of foil, and most of the time, the bacon fat finds its way under or through it anyway.

Oven-cooked bacon takes longer than bacon cooked in a skillet — about 18 minutes — but if you plan to cook a whole package and don’t want to tend to the stove while cooking, your oven is your best bet.

Air Fryer (Winner)

• Cooking time: 7 minutes
• Trouble: 4/10
• How much bacon?: 6-7 slices

there next to nothing I won’t try making it in the air fryer, but amazingly this is my first attempt at making bacon. I was expecting fast cooking, since air fryers cook most foods 25% faster than a regular oven.

The air fryer has proven to be my favorite way to make bacon, with one big caveat (more on that later). for me My favorite glass pot air fryer Those chops cook in about 7 minutes at 375°F — faster than in the oven and skillet. Since air fryers have a crisp rack, grease naturally drips into the bowl below, so there was no need to line the lasagna with a paper towel.

The bacon came out perfectly crispy and kept its shape better than when fried in a pan.

Chaos was minimal. Since the air fryer cooking chamber fits easily into my sink, I was able to wash it in seconds with a sponge and soapy water. The glass bowl air fryer chamber is also dishwasher safe, so another option would have been to wipe off the grease and stick it all into the fryer dishwasher.

The big caveat: capacity

I use modest 4 liter air fryerso I can only install six chips at a time. This is a lot for me and my partner, but if I were making bacon for a group, I would have to cook in batches or invest in Larger model.

He said that…

Not having to monitor a hot, splattered pan or negotiate a greasy baking sheet being pulled from the oven is worth turning it on again to feed a group. There’s also no need to preheat, unlike an oven, and the sheer speed and cleanliness gave the air fryer an edge over other methods I’ve tried.