For this experiment, I cooked bacon in oven and air fryer bacon. To my surprise, I finally found the BEST I’ve ever tasted!

“Why are we doing this experiment?”, you may ask. Well, I really don’t like cooking bacon on the stove. It’s never cooked just the way I want, it’s really messy, and it will smoke up the whole house.

For this experiment, we cooked it three ways – 1) in the oven with a baking rack 2) in the oven without a baking rack 3) in the air fryer. I’m really interested to find out is which cooking method has the easiest cleanup while creating the best tasting product. It’s no good if it’s easy to clean up, but the food doesn’t taste good.

Meerkats and Bacon?

What do meerkats and bacon have in common? Well, nothing, actually. But in my home we call it “meerkating” when I keep going back to the oven and looking at the progress of whatever I’m cooking. It drives my wife absolutely nuts. But I have to make sure my bacon is safe and sound!

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Taste Test Results

• Bacon in oven with a baking rack: this piece was very tasty but you could taste a little bit of the grease coating it. Also, it was in the oven, it did not cook evenly. The pieces towards the back was cooked a little more than the pieces in the front.
• Bacon in oven without a baking rack: not as crispy and way greasier than the pieces cooked with a baking rack.
• Air fryer bacon: this had the cleanest bites and were the crispiest. One might say – the BEST I’ve ever had!

In order of best to least best (I don’t want to say worst because, honestly, it’s hard to make bad bacon):

1. Air fryer.
2. In oven with baking rack
3. In oven without baking rack.

I’d also like to add that the air fryer bacon took HALF of the cooking time than the bacon in oven. Both the oven and air fryer were set to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. So not only is it the tastiest but you can also bang it out faster (see video for reference).

Do you have a favorite bacon recipe? Drop it in the comments below! As always, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, Red Meat Lover, so you never miss a recipe, experiment or Meat America episode!