I have no tolerance for cooking shortcuts that compromise taste and that’s especially true for pricey bacon. If I’m dropping $10 on a package of pork strips, you darn well better believe I’m planning to cook them right.
That said, bacon is largely foolproof. The fat does much of the work in preventing bacon from overcooking or drying out. What it excels at, though, is making a big mess in the kitchen — particularly on the stovetop, where grease has an uncanny range and absolutely no remorse.
In an effort to find the best, cleanest way to make bacon for a Sunday brunch or BLT, I tried several methods, including the stovetop, oven and air fryer.
It turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong.
A frying pan
- Cooking time: 10 minutes
- Hassle: 8/10
- How much bacon: 7-8 strips
This is the way I grew up cooking bacon and it’s perfectly fine. There isn’t much skill needed to fry bacon in a pan, although just about every batch I’ve ever made sends a healthy splatter over the stove. In more unfortunate instances, that infernal grease lands directly on my skin or clothes, presenting two distinct 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. Pan-frying these strips of pork belly also tends to curl them into little bacon balls. While that has no impact on the taste, it can make for a suboptimal presentation.
Another drawback of cooking bacon in the frying pan is its limited capacity. A 10-inch frying pan can hold only about 7 average-sized strips 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. It’s not recommended to put most cookware in the dishwasher, so you’ll have to manage that grease-soaked surface yourself.
The oven
- Cooking time: 18 minutes
- Hassle: 6/10
- How much bacon: 10-12 strips
While it requires more prep, 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 nearly a full package of bacon, making the oven ideal for cooking large quantities.
Using a baking tray and rack allows grease to drip off. That makes for crispier, less greasy results, but it does present a headache when it’s time to clean. Cookie sheets and baking trays don’t fit well in the sink, and there’s typically enough grease that you don’t want to run them through your dishwasher.
You can line the 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 anyway.
Oven-cooked bacon takes longer than bacon cooked in a frying pan — about 18 minutes — but if you’re planning to cook a whole package and don’t want to tend to the stove while it cooks, your oven is the best bet.
The air fryer
- Cooking time: 7 minutes
- Hassle: 4/10
- How much bacon: 6-7 strips
There’s almost nothing I won’t try to make in the air fryer but, astoundingly, this is my first attempt at bacon. I anticipated a quick cook, because air fryers sizzle most food about 25% faster than a standard oven.
The air fryer proved to be my favorite way to make bacon, with one big caveat (more on that later). My favorite glass-bowl air fryer cooked those strips in about 7 minutes at 375°F — faster than the oven and the frying pan. Because air fryers include a crisping rack, grease naturally drips into the vessel below, so there was no need to nestle it in a paper-towel lasagna.
The bacon turned out perfectly crispy and kept its shape better than when fried in a pan.
And the mess was minimal. Because the air fryer cooking chamber fits easily in my sink, I was able to wash it in seconds with a sponge and soapy water. My glass bowl air fryer chamber is also dishwasher-safe so another option would have been to wipe the grease and stick it all in the dishwasher.
The big caveat: Capacity
I use a modest 4-quart air fryer so I can only fit about six strips in at a time. That’s plenty for my partner and me but if I were making bacon for a group, I would have had to cook in batches or invest in a larger model.
That said…
Not having to keep watch over a sizzling, splattering pan or negotiate a grease-filled baking tray pulled from the oven is worth running it back another time to feed a group. There’s also no preheating needed, unlike with an oven, and the sheer speed and cleanliness gave the air frier the edge over the other methods I’ve tried.
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