How to Make Crispy Air Fryer Bacon

Air fryer bacon is crispy, perfectly cooked, and absolutely delicious. It cooks up fast, making it easy to feed a crowd.

Serves: 2-3 Time: 10 minutes Cookbook: Perdue Farms Online

Perfectly cooked crispy bacon is just minutes away! If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will.

We love a good, old-fashioned, country breakfast made up of eggs, biscuits, hashbrowns, and a few crispy bacon slices from time to time. There’s just nothing quite like the comforting sight and smells when a breakfast like that is on our plates.

Today, we’re featuring an air fryer bacon recipe inspired by the folks over at Perdue Farms, a 100-year-old family-owned farm and agriculture business that’s been putting quality meats on American tables since 1920.

This recipe is perfect for a quick breakfast or a lazy Saturday morning when you want to reduce the mess and fuss of cooking bacon on the stovetop. It may not be the traditional way, but of all the different methods, air frying is a solid contender when it comes to cooking food in the kitchen. Serve it with golden-brown air fried hashbrowns and some sheet pan pancakes, and you’ve got yourself a meal!

Let’s get going on the best bacon air fryer recipe we’ve found so you can enjoy some deliciousness!

Jump Ahead:

• ❤️ Why You’ll Love This Recipe
• 🥓 Ingredients Needed to Make Air Fryer Bacon
• 🍴 Equipment You’ll Need in the Kitchen
• 🥄 How to Make Air Fryer Bacon
• ♾️ Variations on Air Fryer Bacon
• ❓ Air Fryer Bacon: Tips, Tricks, and FAQs

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Perfection: This recipe gives you perfectly cooked bacon in minutes. Depending on your preference, you can cook it to “cooked and limp,” “cooked and stiff,” “crispy,” or “so crispy it’s nearly burnt.”

Fast: Air frying lets you cook up a batch of bacon in less time than you’re used to. When you air fry bacon you’ll also find it’s a bit more convenient than stove top since there’s no frying pan, no splatters, and no mess on the heating element.

Family Favorite: One of our favorite things to make for a lazy breakfast is bacon, eggs, and biscuits with a side of hashbrowns. You can’t get much better than that, and this combination is definitely a family favorite.

Ingredients Needed to Make Air Fryer Bacon

• Bacon: This recipe will work with regular bacon, turkey bacon, and thick cut bacon.

Equipment Needed In the Kitchen

Air Fryer

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Tongs

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• Air Fryer: This recipe will work with any air fryer. We have the Ninja Foodi featured here and absolutely love it. It’s a powerhouse when it comes to air frying, dehydrating, roasting, baking, and grilling. The inserts are non-stick and dishwasher safe making the unit a super win-win.
• Tongs: You’ll need to flip the bacon halfway through the cooking time, so a good pair of silicon tongs is perfect.

How to Make Air Fryer Bacon

Whether you need a strip or two for your breakfast, or you need to cook up a whole batch, you’ll have perfectly cooked bacon in minutes thanks to these steps!

Preheat the air fryer

First up, preheat your air fryer to 375 degrees F. You’ll also want to program the total cook time for a total of 10 minutes.

Once the air fryer has preheated, lay your uncooked strips of bacon in a single layer in the air fryer basket to allow the hot air to evenly circulate.

Cook the bacon

Begin the cooking time and allow the bacon strips to cook for 4 minutes. At this point, turn them once, and continue the cooking process for another 3 minutes.

Check your cooked bacon at this point. It’ll be cooked but a bit on the floppy side. An extra minute will bring it to cooked and stiff. Another minute beyond that, and you’ll have the crispiest bacon you can get without burning it or cooked and stiff if you have thick-cut bacon.

Remove the bacon from the air fryer and place it on a plate lined with paper towels to continue draining while it cools down. Place on a fresh plate when ready to serve.

Air Fryer Bacon Tips

Do you want to collect the bacon grease for cooking? Allow the excess grease to drain through the basket and collect in the bottom. Then, when fully cooled, you can collect the extra grease and place it in an airtight container.

Do you have thick-cut bacon? The thickness of your bacon can change the total cook time. Thicker slices will need a few minutes longer than regular-cut bacon.

Do you have a smaller air fryer? Chances are, the bacon strips won’t fit lengthwise. You’ll need to cut them in half in order to get them to fit. You don’t want the strips to overlap, so cutting them will do the trick.

Does your air fryer have a wire rack? We suggest using the middle rack. If using more than one rack, turn the racks halfway through cooking and switch their positions.

Do you want to make cleanup easier? Line the bottommost air fryer basket with aluminum foil. This will catch all the grease. When it’s fully cooked, you can simply remove the foil and save the grease or toss the whole thing.

Does your air fryer smoke while cooking the bacon? If your air fryer smokes, set it to a lower temperature and cook for slightly longer. This will prevent bacon splatters from smoking.

Do you have to preheat the air fryer? We recommend it. If you don’t preheat the air fryer, the first batch will take longer and the second batch will cook faster, leaving you to guess when each batch is ready. By starting with a preheated unit, you can figure out the time to pull it and it will be the same for every batch.

Why 375 degrees F? We found this to be the perfect temperature to cook air-fried bacon.

Variations on Air Fryer Bacon

Brown Sugar Bacon: If you want sweet bacon, sprinkle or dip the strips into a bit of brown sugar before you air fry it.

Chocolate Dipped Bacon: After the bacon has cooked and completely cooled, prepare some melting chocolate and dip one end of the bacon into the chocolate. Alternatively, you can lay the cooked and cooled bacon on a baking sheet and drizzle the bacon with melted chocolate.

Air Fryer Bacon: Tips, Tricks, and FAQs

More Air Fryer Recipes

Air frying is a total game-changer and we love using this handy tool in our kitchen. Here are some more great recipes!

• Air Fryer Egg Rolls: About as classic an appetizer as you can get – egg rolls that go from frozen to done in just a few minutes.
• Air Fryer Sausage: This recipe works brilliantly when you want to whip up some sausages for dinner.
• Air Fryer Chicken Strips: Ready for chicken strips that adults and kids will love? Look no further than this recipe.
• Air Fryer Biscuits: Whip up a batch of biscuits to go with your bacon in just minutes!

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