Home Chef’s Genius Bacon Cooking Hack Will Change How You Fry Forever

One enterprising cook's come up with a counter-intuitive yet sure-fire method for perfectly crispy bacon every time.

Home Chef’s Genius Bacon Cooking Hack Will Change How You Fry Forever

Image: The Washington Post

There are two schools of thought when it comes to bacon. Some people prefer the juicy, porky goodness that is back (or ‘middle’) bacon. Others prefer the crispy delight of a good piece of side (or ‘streaky’) bacon. We can all agree that bacon is fantastic, but it’s also surprisingly easy to stuff up.

Often when you order side bacon, you end up with either annoyingly flabby rashers or burnt-to-a-crisp pieces of carbon. Nailing perfectly crispy bacon is a bit of a dark art… Or you have to resign yourself to baking rashers in the oven for what feels like an eternity.

Thankfully, all our crispy bacon prayers have been answered. One enterprising American home chef has come up with a rather counter-intuitive yet seemingly sure-fire way to get perfectly crispy bacon while pan-frying, every time. The secret? Just a little bit of H2O.

Chris ‘Flavor God’ Wallace, a skilled cook who’s gained a sizeable social media following and produces a range of ‘Flavor God’ seasoning mixes, shared his bacon hack on TikTok. After lining up his rashers in a nonstick pan, using a kettle he pours a small amount of water over the bacon. The results have to be seen to be believed. [Watch below.]

“OK before you yell at your phone, hear me out,” he says in the video.

“Adding water to your bacon while cooking does two things: it makes crispy bacon and also keeps your bacon from splattering.”

His method is pretty simple: just add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan and cook over medium-high until the water evaporates. While conventional wisdom would say you need to be careful mixing fats with water like that, Wallace has pointed out that the water cooks off before any fat renders to liquid.

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Commenters have suggested that another way to achieve similar results is simply to run your bacon rashers under water before adding them to your pan. Either way, we’re pretty keen to try this out for ourselves.

The other advantage of this method is that it makes it easier to clean your pan afterwards. Quick, crispy bacon that you don’t have to spend so much time cleaning up after? Surely this is a gift from the gods…

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