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On Sunday, Yahoo published an article that sent bacon sarnie lovers into crisis mode. In it, dietitian Brenda Peralta suggested that an air fryer should not be used to cook bacon.
Yahoo appears to have removed the original article, but numerous other publications have re-quoted the advice in articles, including the Express and the Daily Record.
We decided to put it to the test.
First, the dietitian’s warning against cooking air fryer bacon was divided into several points:
- Bacon is a fatty food and fat can cause “smoke or splattering.”
- A bacon strip is “a small and delicate food, and it can be difficult to turn it over or remove it from the air fryer basket without breaking it.”
- “The air fryer basket may not be big enough for a large amount of bacon. This makes it difficult for the bacon to cook evenly and can create a lot of smoke and odor.”
We disagree with the dietitian’s description of bacon as “small and delicate,” which are not words typically associated with one of the fattiest ingredients in a deep fryer.
We would also like to point out that with a set of silicone tongs you can remove bacon from the air fryer basket just as easily as from a pan. You can buy them from Amazon UK (£6.99) and Amazon US ($13.99).
But we can certainly test whether cooking bacon makes an air fryer smoke, and how cooking in the air fryer compares to cooking in the oven or pan frying.
For the bacon-making tests, we cooked both pork belly and back bacon because we pride ourselves on our thoroughness and because our tester liked to eat bacon sandwiches all morning.
Fry bacon in a pan
- Cooking time: 5.30 minutes
- Clean up: Fairly easy
- How wonderful did the kitchen smell afterwards? Terribly
I’ll be honest. I’ve never cooked bacon before. But what I discovered is that it’s almost impossible to make a mess. As a recipe, it is the exact opposite of a cheese soufflé. Give most meat eaters a bacon sandwich and they’re much more likely to say, “Thank you very much” than, “What cooking method did you use to prepare this?”
The first test was frying bacon in a pan. I’ve read that bacon contains enough of its own fat that it doesn’t need extra oil when cooking. However, it stuck to the pan almost immediately, so thanks to whoever spread that lie.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
I added a little oil and the bacon happily continued cooking. The only downside was that I had to stand and turn the slices a few times.
Because the bacon was cooked in oil and its own fat, the excess oil had to be wiped off before serving.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
- Score: 8/10 – Fast, easy and flawless. I think I can teach this to my cat.
Cooking bacon in an oven
- Cooking time: 30 minutes at 175C/350F
- Clean up: Very fast, but a bit wasteful
- How wonderful did the kitchen smell afterwards? Slightly
I followed AllRecipes’ cooking advice, which I chose because it was one of the first to appear in a search.
It suggested a cooking temperature of 175°C/350°F and what seemed an almost absurdly long cooking time of 30 minutes.
In my opinion, if you’re going to eat a bacon sandwich, you want to complete the task as quickly as possible, without time for regrets or Googling cardiovascular disease. You don’t want to stand around for half an hour thinking about your mortality.
Given the long cooking time in the oven, this must also be the most expensive way to prepare a few slices, unless there’s a restaurant in London that serves them covered in gold flakes for £50.
I placed the bacon strips on a foil-lined baking sheet – but you can also use baking paper – and after 15 minutes they were still pale and limp, barely acquainted with the heat of the oven. I turned them around after 20 minutes and returned to WebMD.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
The bacon still wasn’t perfectly crispy after 30 minutes, so I gave it another 5, and served it anyway, on the grounds that it was a) cooked enough to at least not cause death in the short term term, and b) bacon , so whatever.
The cleanup was easy, but I felt a little guilty about sending a piece of foil to the dump for such a dreary bit of cooking.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
- Score: 3/10 – Life is too short.
Fry bacon in an air fryer
- Cooking time: Pork belly 5 minutes, back bacon 8 minutes at 200°C/390°F
- Clean up: Fairly easy
- How wonderful did the kitchen smell afterwards? Slightly
I used the first cooking instructions I came across, from BBC Good Food, placed the bacon strips directly on the crisper plates and turned on the air fryer.
One thing that the dietitian pays close attention to is the limited cooking space that an air fryer provides for your slices. Rashers should not overlap or be placed on top of each other during cooking.
In an average single-drawer air fryer, you probably have enough room for three large strips of bacon, or four smaller slices of pork belly. It’s not much less than a frying pan.
And if you have an air fryer with two drawers, you can double the amount.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
I ended up cooking a smaller number of slices because I didn’t want to kill my food tester, who doubles as my husband.
I used my trusty Ninja FlexDrawer, which meant I could cook two types of bacon at the same time, with different cooking times, and sync them up to cook them at the same time.
But even in a single-drawer air fryer, it’s so fast that you can cook two batches and clean up in less time than cooking in the oven.
After reading the dietitian’s advice about the dangers of smoking and spitting bacon, I was on high alert and half-expecting my air fryer to burst into flames and start singing in Latin.
But it was absolutely fine. The oil from the bacon dripped under the sharpening plate and did not get hot enough to smoke.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
If your air fryer is smoking, this is usually a sign that it needs a good cleaning. Once the cooking area looks good, wipe off any food residue from the heating coil above it with a soft brush or dry sponge (but only after it has cooled).
The fact that the fat drained also meant that the bacon wasn’t as greasy when it was done cooking.
The only problem with using an air fryer is that the circulating hot air can cause bacon strips to flip during cooking, but you can use tongs to flip them back over.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
- Score: 9/10 – Even easier than cooking in a pan as it requires no supervision and an alarm notifies you when it’s done.
Tester feedback
All prepared bacon was delivered to a tester in sandwich format. The tester was less happy with the bacon sandwich from the oven than with the sandwiches from the pan and the air fryer.
But honestly there were no complaints, just a lot of eating noise. In general, we would say that cooking in the oven is the worst option because it is slow and expensive. It’s probably only worth it if bacon is just one part of a larger meal. But air frying bacon is fine, as long as your air fryer is clean and you don’t crowd the food.
If you want air fryer buying advice, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve rounded up the best dual tray air fryers, the best Ninja air fryers, the best air fryer ovens, and the best air fryers across all categories.