Air Fryer Bacon Recipe Easy Method With A Secret Ingredient

Bacon belongs in its own food group, would you agree? It goes with anything for breakfast. It makes the perfect topping on sandwiches like a BLT or burgers for lunch, or crumbled and sprinkled on top of a salad, soup, or a baked potato for dinner. Air Fryers have become very popular over the last few years, and for many good reasons. There are so many delicious air fryer recipes. They give food the crispiness of oil frying, without the oil, and food cooks more evenly. However, the number one for owning an Air Fryer in our family is Air Fryer Bacon. We can’t get enough of it. It is one of my favorite ways to cook crispy bacon with no preheating. You can easily drain the excess grease out of the bottom of the air fryer. It is crispy, but still chewy enough to get the satisfying flavor our of every bite. In addition, the bacon is evenly cooked with no pieces of uncooked fat.

Ingredients in this Air Fryer Bacon Recipe

Thick-Cut Bacon Optional: Maple Syrup

Ways to Cook Bacon

There are three ways we like to cook bacon in the kitchen. Here are the pros and cons of each:

Fried Bacon (in a skillet on the stove top or on a griddle)

Pros: The bacon strips cook up nice and crispy. You can watch it cook and monitor the degree of doneness you prefer. Many pieces of bacon can be cooked at one time. Cons: It is messy and the bacon is greasy. Bacon grease splatters all over the stove, and even you and your clothes if you aren’t careful. The smell lingers in the house for hours.

Oven Cooked Bacon

Pros: It is less messy because the grease is contained in the oven. The bacon doesn’t have to be monitored as closely as when frying, making it easier to prepare other food as the bacon cooks. A full sheet pan of bacon can be cooked at one time. Cons: The bacon doesn’t crisp up as nice, and it doesn’t cook as evenly. You need to have a rack to cook the bacon on so it isn’t sitting in the grease in the bottom of the sheet pan. It also takes longer to cook bacon in the oven, usually 15-18 minutes.

Air Fryer Bacon

Pros: My new favorite way to cook bacon! The bacon cooks evenly and is crispy. It only takes 10 minutes to cook. Grease from the bacon drips through the rack as the bacon cooks, so the bacon comes out less greasy. The mess is contained to inside the air fryer, no splatter to clean up, which also keeps the smell of cooked bacon is more contained. We all love the smell of bacon, but not when it lingers for hours in the house. Cons: Depending on the size of the Air Fryer basket, you can only cook a small amount of bacon at a time. You may have to cook in multiple batches.