Every now and then, someone goes viral on social media for challenging traditional culinary techniques. Last month, Giada De Laurentiis made headlines for deliberately burning her pasta to enhance its flavor, and just a few weeks ago, Gordon Ramsay left his followers puzzled with his unique method for poaching whole chickens. But if you take a closer look at these seemingly controversial trends, you’ll quickly discover that some are actually quite brilliant.
A recent clip circulating on social media has sparked a frenzy, showing a creator dumping all of her bacon into a deep pot and continuously stirring it to achieve crispy morsels. Viewers are left divided, unsure whether to be distressed or intrigued by this unconventional method.
The viral clip, which has garnered 9.1 million views to date, shows TikTok creator @_jenifer___ asking her followers if they’ve ever cooked bacon by adding a bunch of it to a deep pot and simply stirring it until it becomes crispy. The video quickly sparked a flood of comments with mixed reactions. One person wrote, “This is so smart! No splatter and perfectly crispy,” while another user commented, “I suddenly realize as a collective we have been overcomplicating cooking bacon.”
Not everyone was impressed, though. One person remarked, “For me, there’s just something about my bacon being straight and flat. I find cooking in [the] oven much easier,” while another said, “This gives me anxiety. I have to cook it in single strips.”
“The stirring method works because the bacon fat renders more evenly and slowly for perfectly crispy bacon,” she says. “Also, because you don’t need to lay the strips flat in a single layer, you can cook more bacon at a time instead of working in batches.”
If you try this stirring method the next time you cook bacon, you’ll end up with a good amount of rendered fat. But don’t toss it out! Perlmutter suggests, “You can use leftover rendered bacon fat to roast vegetables or other protein, fry rice, cook eggs, or stir into salad dressing. You can even chill it to use in place of some of the butter in biscuit dough.”
This unconventional bacon cooking tip might seem a bit off-putting at first, but it’s actually an ingenious way to get crispy bacon without the hassle of arranging strips on a cookie sheet or cramming them into a small skillet. Whether you’re here for this hack or not, it’s a prime example of how breaking the rules in the kitchen can lead to surprisingly tasty results.
