When our test kitchen assistant Alyssa told me that the secret to perfect bacon might be water, I wasn't too interested. In the Delish test kitchen, we love the oven method. Baking at 400° for 20 minutes is a reliable and easy technique that yields crispy strips every time. Why would we cook it any other way?
Because Alyssa was adamant that we owed it to our readers to test all possible ways of cooking bacon. And considering she cooks approximately a pound of Oscar Meyers a day, she knows best. She heard about the trick from The Kitchn, which claims that adding water to the pan produces perfect bacon without any splattering. After a thorough side-by-side comparison between two stovetop methods, here are our fearless assistant's findings.
Test #1: With Water
Process: Add bacon to nonstick pan then add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook the bacon over medium-high until the water completely evaporated, then reduce heat to medium until the bacon was crispy.
Results: Crispy and slightly chewy bacon. The strips held their shape better than bacon cooked without water, and, perhaps more importantly, the bacon fat didn't splatter at all.
Test #2: Without Water
Process: Cook bacon as you normally would — most likely over medium heat until crispy.
Results: Crispy bacon with a big greasy mess (on stovetop and apron). The bacon strips seemed thinner and more brittle than the bacon cooked with water.
CONSENSUS
From now on in the Delish kitchen, when we are cooking 6 or less strips of bacon (or what fits in our largest skillet), we will be cooking it on the stovetop with water. When cooking more than 6 strips of bacon, we'll stick to our oven method. We recommend you do the same.
