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I was searing salmon with a friend the other night when I reached into the cupboard, pulled out my beat-up mesh splatter guard, and placed it over the top of the skillet. It's a mindless habit for me—anything that splatters grease gets the screen thrown over it before it gets a chance to make too much of a mess. For my friend, this was a revelation. "How have I never known about this?" he asked. It was as if he'd just discovered a special secret.
You'll probably never see a restaurant chef using a splatter screen when they're searing a steak or frying up some bacon. It's not very sexy. But at home, especially if cleaning the stovetop is last on the list of chores you want to do, it's a saving grace. Splatter screens catch the droplets of grease that fly out the pan whenever meat (or vegetables!) hit the hot surface. That means less, well, splatter all over your stove. It also means your body will be safer from grease burns. And really, what could be sexier than that?
It's the simplest tool: just a mesh screen stretched across a metal circle with a handle. The mesh keeps (most of) the grease in, but lets steam escape. This is crucial. If you were to, say, use a lid as a splatter screen, you'd end up steaming whatever you're cooking instead of searing it. You can find silicone models, and you can find them sold in sets of different sizes, but I go for a simple, cheap model that sells for less than ten bucks. The 12-inch screen works for every size pan (it doesn't matter if the screen is larger than the pan it's covering), so I use it all time—much more often than I clean my stove.
