Everybody I know who owns an air fryer says it’s changed their cooking life, so I’ve been pretty tempted to nab one for myself.
But even the most ardent air fryer chef admits there are some things the equipment isn’t cut out for.
For instance, experts say you can’t just lob tin foil into the appliance and pray for the best ― you’ve got to be a bit more intentional about it.
And it turns out that bacon really isn’t the best candidate for the cultish contraption either.
Why shouldn’t you put bacon in an air fryer?
It has to do with the meat’s fat content.
Bacon already contains so much fat that you don’t really need to use butter or oil to cook it ― that’s why simply lobbing bacon in the oven is a really effective way to crisp up big batches easily.
The premise of an air fryer is that it can crisp foods up without much fat. It does that by circulating air around your food in much closer quarters than your oven can manage.
That’s usually helpful, but when your air fryer comes into contact with something as high-fat as bacon, that cooking method renders all the fat out of your rashers without giving it anywhere to go.
That can cause your appliance to fill up with fat which can burn and even smoke.
Additionally, that problem means you can only really cook small batches of the stuff at a time ― it simply won’t crisp up if piled on top of itself.
So what should I do instead?
As we’ve mentioned above, baking your bacon is a really helpful method as it can accommodate large amounts of food at once and doesn’t require much effort.
Pan-frying is also effective and fast for smaller amounts of bacon.
If you must cook it in your air fryer, BBC GoodFood recommends placing it in a single layer in your air fryer at 200C.
“Cook streaky bacon rashers for 6-10 mins – just-cooked bacon will take 6 mins, but crispier bacon will take 9-10 mins,” they advised.
Back bacon, meanwhile, should take about 4-8 minutes.
They suggest only using three back rashers or six pieces of streaky bacon at a time.