The Type Of Pan You Absolutely Do Not Want To Cook Bacon In

Bacon is so much more than just a breakfast meat. It's always wise to keep some of the salty stuff around for crumbling on salads, completing a club salad, and garnishing a classic Bloody Mary cocktail. This morning staple is only as good as the way it's cooked, however, and there are at least 14 mistakes you can make when cooking bacon that we've found so far. Perhaps the easiest mistake to make is cooking bacon in a thin-bottomed pan.

Heavy-bottomed skillets made of either stainless steel or cast iron are the best choice for making bacon on the stove, because they are the only vessels that can cook the meat low and slow. Unlike thin pans, which are designed to get very hot and cook food quickly, pans made with thick metal heat up slowly and retain their temperature, which are the ideal conditions for rendering bacon fat. While technically you can cook bacon in almost any kind of pan, a thin pan like a non-stick skillet is much more likely to overcook the outside of the meat before all of the fat can be rendered, so you can end up with bacon that's both soft and burnt at the same time.

Cast iron is a classic bacon-maker, and it doesn't matter if you use a coated or uncoated model; bacon has so much fat that sticking isn't much of an issue once the fat starts to render. A decent cast iron pan is an investment that will last a long time if you treat it right, but you can get a decent option like the Lodge 10.25 Inch Cast Iron Pre-Seasoned Skillet that will do a great job for less than $20, at the time of writing. Porcelain-coated cast iron is also nice to have, as they require less maintenance, and this Crock Pot Artisan 10 Inch Enameled Cast Iron Round Skillet is a good choice for $33.99.

Cast iron isn't for everyone (although we've debunked a lot of myths about cast iron skillets), so the next best choice is a stainless steel pan with tri-ply or five-ply, which refers to pans with either three or five layers of aluminum that extends to the rim and produces superior heat distribution. These pans can get expensive if you opt for a brand name like All-Clad, but Tramontina makes some excellent dupes for a fraction of the price, such as the Seattle Tri-Ply Clad Stainless Steel 10-Inch Frying Pan for $39.95, which leaves some money in the budget for a splatter screen.

Regardless of which pan you choose, the secret to perfectly cooked bacon is to start it in a cold pan with a little bit of water and go slow. Bacon should take at least 8 to 12 minutes to cook on the stove, so don't rush a good thing by using a thin pan unless you want disappointing results.