The Secret To Perfectly Cooked Bacon Is An Ingredient Everyone Has

We love it with our pancakes, on our sandwiches and burgers, wrapped around steaks, and crumbled in salads. Science says bacon tastes good with everything, but that's only if you cook it the right way. A floppy, chewy strip of bacon isn't likely to win too many hearts. However, cooking bacon to the perfect consistency can be surprisingly challenging. For starters, it's a mess — if you're not careful, it will splatter hot grease all over your stove. On top of that, the meat often ends up burning before all of the bacon fat has fully rendered. Fortunately, you can avoid both of these issues with the help of an unexpected ingredient that you're guaranteed to have on hand.

The secret to perfectly cooked bacon is adding just a touch of water to the pan. You'd think that a wet pan would make for soggy bacon, but in fact, the opposite is true. If you start your bacon in a cold pan with just a little bit of water in it, it will come out tender and with perfectly crispy edges. Even better, the bacon fat won't splatter out of the pan as it sizzles, making cleanup a whole lot easier. It's an incredibly simple method that you'll see many chefs and cooking content creators using, but still, it seems odd, doesn't it? How could something as simple (and wet) as water make bacon so crisp?

Cooking bacon perfectly is all about controlling how the bacon fat renders. The thick, white fat around the edges must melt into the pan where it can function like cooking oil. Unfortunately, by the time you've rendered all of that fat, the meat of the bacon might burn. Adding water to the pan prevents the meat from getting crisp until the fat has fully rendered.

You start the bacon in a cold pan with just a splash of water, and as it begins to boil, the fat starts rendering. By the time all the water has evaporated, the fat will have been rendered and the meat will start to crisp right up. The exact cooking time will vary based on the thickness of the bacon and whether you're using half strips (which is a great way to make bacon fit on sandwiches).

If you're going to use this method to cook bacon, it's essential that you don't use too much water. You only want enough to cover the bottom of the pan, which should be just a tablespoon or two. Don't add so much water that it fully submerged the bacon strips, as that will seriously increase the cooking time. Plus, if you add too much water, the salt in the bacon can seep out into it, leaving the meat itself bland. Once you've got perfectly cooked bacon, be sure to keep it that way by following the proper way to store bacon so it stays crisp.