How To: Create a Grease Splatter Screen Out of Pantyhose and a Wire Coat Hanger

We've all been there. You wake up early, hungry for breakfast, but not just any breakfast will do. You want bacon and eggs. So, you blindly stumble into your kitchen, underwear-clad, and begin fumbling about with pots and pans. After a few minutes, you fill your pan with delicious and smokey rashers and turn the heat on. Everything seems okay... until the bacon actually starts to cook. With a splat, burning hot grease flies out of the pan and bombards your skin, causing intense pain and great annoyance.

Well, I'm here to stop the pain, because with a few common household items, you can make a homemade grease splatter screen that is far superior to what you can buy in the store. Why? Because it's free!

Materials

• Pan
• Wire coat hanger
• Aluminum foil
• Pantyhose
• Needle-nose pliers
• Scissors

Step 1: Straighten a Wire Coat Hanger

Grab a wire coat hanger and clip the top off, straightening the hanger out into a line. I surprisingly found out that wire coat hangers are very hard to find, as literally no store that I called sold them. However, after some sleuthing, I found that most dry cleaners have copious amounts of wire hangers that they are willing to sell for very cheap if you ask nicely.

Step 2: Start a Circle

Grab something round that's roughly the same size as the pan you employ most and use it as a guide to bend the hanger into the beginnings of a circle. I found a circular microwave bacon cooker that worked out nicely.

Step 3: Complete Your Circle

Take a pair of needle-nose pliers and interweave the ends of your hanger, bending the tips upward to ensure that they stay in place.

You should now have a complete circle.

Step 4: Add Aluminum Foil

Rip off a piece of aluminum foil, roughly a foot and a half long, and fold it into a square. Measure it to make sure it fits in the inside of your circle. Technically, this step is optional, but I like to do it as it adds a nice bit of stability.

Step 5: Add Pantyhose

Using a pair of scissors, cut one of the legs from a pair of pantyhose.

Then, pull them over and around the coat hanger circle. Make sure to slide the foil square in the center, if you wish to do so.

Step 6: Secure the Pantyhose

Tie a basic knot in the end of the pantyhose and cut the excess off.

Step 7: Add Aluminum Guards

Cut several strips of foil and wrap them around the edge of the pantyhose-lined wire circle.

This is to ensure that when you have your splatter screen on a hot pan that it does not burn the pantyhose.

Finished!

Your splatter screen is now complete and bacon grease burned chests are a thing of the past! I find that needle-nose pliers are a good way to transfer the screen to and from pans.

What would you make out of a wire coat hanger? Comment below.