This Is the Bacon Upgrade You Didn’t Know You Needed

I only have patience for cooking hacks that don’t skimp on flavor. Microwave Poached Eggs and the reverse seared steak makes the cut. The same goes for a bacon thing I discovered recently – one that I now consider non-negotiable.

Bacon is hard to mess up. The fat does the heavy lifting. What is this East Well, it makes a mess, especially on the stovetop, where grease travels surprisingly far and shows no mercy.

I thought the oven was king

I had previously moved from the cook to a approaching the ovenbut the pace 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 did a test comparing bacon made in the frying panTHE oven and the air fryer. My goal was simple: see which kitchen tool makes the crispiest strips with the least work and cleanup.

I also gave the microwave a chance: although it technically worked, the bacon often came out dry or rubbery, so I removed it from operation.

Here’s how the three main contenders fared.

A frying pan

• Cooking time: 10 minutes
• Hassle: 8/10
• How much bacon: 7-8 bands

This is how I grew up cooking bacon and it’s perfectly fine. There’s not a lot of skill required to fry bacon in a pan, although almost every batch I’ve made sends up a healthy splatter on the stovetop. In more unfortunate cases, that hellish grease lands directly on my skin or clothes, presenting two different but equally aggravating problems.

Seared bacon absorbs a ton of grease, which is why many turn to paper towels to drain it after cooking. Pan-frying these pork belly strips also tends to curl them into little bacon balls. While this has no impact on taste, it may result in suboptimal presentation.

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

Then there remains the question of cleaning said pan after use. It’s not recommended to put most kitchen utensils in the dishwasher, so you’ll have to deal with that grease-soaked surface yourself.

The oven

• Cooking time: 18 minutes
• Hassle: 6/10
• How much bacon: 10-12 strips

Although it requires more preparation, oven-baked bacon has clear advantages over pan-frying. On the one hand, capacity isn’t an issue, as a standard cookie sheet or baking sheet can hold almost a full package of bacon, making the oven ideal for baking large quantities.

Using a baking sheet and rack allows the fat to drip off. This produces crispier, less greasy results, but it presents a headache when it comes time to clean up. Cookie sheets and baking sheets don’t hold up well in the sink, and there’s usually enough grease that you don’t want to run them through your dishwasher.

You can line the baking sheet with foil, but it takes a lot of foil and most of the time the bacon grease will sneak under or through it anyway.

Baked bacon takes longer than bacon cooked in a frying pan – about 18 minutes – but if you plan to cook a whole pack and don’t want to deal with the stove while cooking, your oven is the better choice.

The air fryer

• Cooking time: 7 minutes
• Hassle: 4/10
• How much bacon: 6-7 bands

There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t try making in the air fryer, but, surprisingly, this is my first attempt at bacon. I expected quick cooking, as air fryers sizzle most foods about 25% faster than a standard oven.

The air fryer has proven to be my favorite way to make bacon, with one big caveat (more on that later). My favorite air fryer with glass bowl cook these strips in about 7 minutes at 375°F, which is faster than both oven and skillet. Since air fryers include a crispy rack, the fat naturally flows into the container below, so there was no need to nestle it into a lasagna with paper towels.

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

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

The big caveat: capacity

I use a modest 4 Quart Air Fryerso I can only insert about six strips at a time. It’s more than enough for my partner and I, but if I was making bacon for a group, I would have had to cook in batches or invest in a larger model.

That said…

Not having to monitor a sizzling, splattering pan or negotiate a grease-filled baking sheet removed from the oven makes it worth flipping another time to feed a crowd. No preheating is also necessary, unlike an oven, and the speed and cleanliness gave the air fryer the edge over other methods I’ve tried.