Bacon is something many households cook as part of their breakfast, but the prospect of cleaning a greasy hob and pan often acts as a deterrent.
However, Erin Clarke, a seasoned cook and founder of Well Plated, suggests an ingenious solution – she says to forget the stove and prepare your bacon in an air fryer instead.
Erin claimed: “Tantalizingly crispy air fryer bacon is hands-down the best and easiest bacon you can make. Evenly cooked and perfectly crisp, it cooks faster, tastes better and makes less mess than the oven or stovetop.”
Cooking bacon this way might seem quite straightforward, but it offers distinct advantages. The air fryer method ensures a more uniform cooking of the meat, resulting in enhanced flavour and texture.
Using a traditional frying pan to cook your bacon often leads to uneven heating. The fat tends to heat faster than the meat, resulting in burnt or overly crispy edges, while the bacon’s centre remains undercooked and chewy.
The hot circulating air within an air fryer allows the fat to render slowly, ensuring even cooking from all sides and achieving desirable crispiness.
This method also allows the excess fat to drip away from the bacon preventing it from becoming soggy and excessively greasy, allowing a distinctive smoky flavour to develop – unlike skillet-fried bacon which becomes oily and loses flavour as it wallows in its own fat.
According to Erin, using an air fryer to cultivate crispy strips of bacon is clearly her preferred method. Its speed, simplicity, and lack of residual mess outclass traditional pan or oven frying.
She explained: “Because the air fryer is compact and uses powerful convection cooking, it cooks foods more quickly than they bake in the oven. One of the best parts of making bacon in the air fryer is the quick clean-up. No greasy stove.”
To start, snip your bacon strips in half and arrange them in the air fryer basket so they’re laid out flat, without any overlap – this ensures every inch crisps up nicely.
You might want to line the basket with foil or parchment paper for even easier clean-up, but you’ll find there’s way less mess than when using a frying pan.
Post-cooking, all that’s needed is a simple swipe of the basket rather than laborious scrubbing.
Crank your air fryer up to 180C and set your timer for five minutes if you’re cooking thin-cut bacon, or go for ten minutes if you prefer it thick-cut.
The exact crispiness will vary depending on your air fryer model and how you like your bacon done.
