Don't Even Think About Tossing Bacon In The Slow Cooker

We admit that we're not entirely sure if anyone's actually making this mistake or not. Bacon, after all, is closely associated with another kind of cooking instrument; if you close your eyes and imagine something cooking in a frying pan, it's probably going to be bacon. Likewise, slow cookers are most often used for soups and stews, not anything that requires quick heat. But if you're thinking of firing up the ol' Crock Pot to crisp up a few slices of bacon, y'know ... maybe don't do that. It's not going to cause you much harm, but it won't taste very good. (It's one of many foods you shouldn't put in a slow cooker.)

Bacon, you see, is usually at its best when it's as crispy as possible. Who doesn't like biting into a slice and feeling it shatter between your teeth like delicious, pork-flavored glass? Unfortunately, while slow cookers are terrific at preparing braised dishes over long periods of time so they'll be ready when you get home from work, they're terrible at making things crispy. "Low and slow" just isn't how you get crispy food, especially with a lid trapping all of those vapors inside; you might as well ask a turtle to fly you to the moon.

As we mentioned above, cooking bacon in a frying pan is the classic method of preparation, and it'll certainly get the job done. Frying just about anything will make it crispy, and it accomplishes it in a reasonably quick amount of time, too. But preparing bacon by cooking it in an oven (with parchment paper, of course, unless you don't intend to use those pans again) might be even better. Not only does it cook perfectly, it makes much less of a mess (and offers a much lower risk of burning your forearm with spattering bacon fat).

If you're looking for other options, you can use the microwave to cook your bacon, which will work wonderfully so long as you have plenty of paper towels handy. If you have an air fryer handy, you can go ahead and use that as well, with the typical caveats of protecting the bottom of the fryer from the grease (and subsequent smoke). If you're making a dish that uses bacon in other contexts, like as a wrapping, you should use one of these methods, even if the whole rest of it uses the slow cooker. It's a useful tool, but it can't do it all.