Bacon isn't difficult to cook, but it's messy, and there are still ways to screw it up. That said, even burnt or bendy bacon is better than no bacon at all.
For the sake of great bacon, I've run a side-by-side (by-side) test of cooking methods to see which yields the crispiest, most tempting strips with the least hassle, aka clean-up.
For this experiment, I cooked bacon three ways: in a frying pan, in the oven and in the air fryer. I also cooked a few strips in the microwave, but let's get one thing out of the way: while the microwave can indeed make edible bacon, it produces the least satisfying result, by far.
So then, on to the primary contenders.
Frying pan
Cooking time : 10 minutes
: 10 minutes Hassle : 8/10
: 8/10 How much bacon: 7-8 strips
I grew up on pan-fried bacon but my test revealed there's a better way. Mike Mackinven/Getty Images
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, though 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, which presents two different but equally aggravating problems.
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