GoKawiilThere are worse ways to spend a morning than standing over a skillet watching bacon, but there are significantly better ones. Using the air fryer is at the top of the list. When you use one to cook bacon, wondrous things happen: Fat renders evenly without any attention, both sides crisp at the same rate without flipping and grease drips harmlessly into the basket instead. The result is consistently crispier bacon in less time, with cleanup that takes less than a minute. Once you’ve made it this way, going back to the skillet is going to seem like a comically bad idea.
I made mine in the frying pan for years, dodging splatter bombs through a morning haze and bracing for a greasy stove to clean after. I eventually moved to an oven-baked method, which cuts down on grease splatter but is a bit of a pain to prep. With my air fryer in heavy rotation, I decided to give it a chance, cooking bacon in the compact appliance, on the stovetop and in the oven to see which bacon-making method works best.
Here’s how my bacon tests went, and how I’ll be making it going forward.
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 required to fry bacon in a pan, though just about every batch I’ve ever made leaves 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 taste, it can lead to a suboptimal presentation.
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