A bacon-cooking technique born out of necessity is blowing minds on social media.
On Feb. 25, Little Rock, Arkansas-area resident Jenifer Presnull posted a TikTok about the unorthodox way she prepares bacon.
“I know I can’t be the only one who cooks bacon this way!” she captioned the video. “It’s so much better than frying and a skillet. You don’t get the splatter and it all cooks and it’s done at the same time.”
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The clip shows her cooking a big batch of bacon — three pounds, to be exact — in a medium-sized pot on her stovetop. No frying pan, no baking sheet — just a pot full o’ bacon.
During the video, the bacon goes from raw to furiously bubbling in a pool of its own fat to perfectly curled, golden brown and crispy. Presnull ends the video by draining the sizzling strips on a paper towel-lined plate, ready for consumption.
Her video went viral, garnering over 8.6 million views and over 23,000 comments — mostly from those in complete and utter shock:
- “I didn’t know chaos bacon was even an option.”
- “My OCD would never allow this.”
- “This is so smart! No splatter and perfectly crispy.”
- “I didnt know this was allowed.”
- “shock. disgust. realization. clarity. admiration. realization. self reflection. dishonored. ashamed. embarrassment — timeline of my emotions.”
- “at first? war crime. by the end? Sold.”
- “I’ve never had a video fill me with such disappointment in the beginning only to end with me disappointed in myself for having not done this before. Will try this next time.”
- “Deep frying the bacon in its own fat is the superior method for crispy, flavorful bacon.”
- “I suddenly realize as a collective we have been over complicating cooking bacon.”
Presnull, who works as a director of instructional technology for a school district in central Arkansas, says she has her husband’s side of the family to thank for inspiring this particular skill.
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“It was about 25 years ago, when I met my mother-in-law. She was cooking, and she threw all of her bacon in a pot. And I thought that it was the craziest thing, until it turned out,” Presnull tells TODAY.com.
“I didn’t have a need to cook that much bacon for so, so long in my life, until I had a larger family of my own,” she continues. “As soon as that need arose, I knew exactly how to do it most efficiently.”
Presnull says she regularly prepares meals for a large group — her husband, four kids, ages 10 to 21, and sometimes more. In a follow-up TikTok, she revealed she was making all that bacon for dinnertime BLTs.
“I feed friends and family when they come over,” she says. “So I cook a lot of food.”
If you decide to try the unconventional bacon-frying method yourself, Presnull suggests to stir and toss consistently, but not constantly. “You want to give it time to brown between tossing!” she says.
Many of the commenters remarked that after cooking all that bacon, you’re left with the perfect cooking medium for eggs, potatoes and more. Presnull agrees, advising home cooks to save that “beautiful bacon fat” in a Mason jar for future recipes if they don’t plan on using it right away.
“My favorite comments are the ones where people will say, ‘My mom used to do it this way,’ or, ‘My grandma did, and thank you for bringing back those memories,’ because it’s kind of an old-school method,” Presnull says.
“You know, I didn’t really think that the way that I made bacon was that unique.”
This article originally appeared on TODAY.com. Read more from TODAY:
