Bacon in the Air Fryer

In the Amazon review area, questions had been asked about cooking bacon in the air fryer and the general consensus was that there was too much fat and it would smoke and possible be a fire hazard. I have tried every way I know to cook bacon without it being messy. I am not a fan of the microwave. In fact, we have one but it's in the laundry room. I tried cooking bacon in the oven but for just the two of is, it seems like a waste to heat up the oven for that, and worse - I store a lot of cast iron cookware in the oven so that all has to come out before cooking bacon. I always go back to cooking it in a skillet on top of the stove. Even with a tall sided skillet and a lid, I end up with bacon grease splattering on the stove.

I figured the worst that could happen was that the fryer would create a lot of smoke but I would watch it carefully and try to cook bacon in there.

Bacon Cooked in Air Fryer

The bacon strips were cut in half. The temp on the fryer was turned down to 330°. I set the timer for about 15 minutes but after 6 minutes, I was seeing a bit of white smoke so I turned the fryer off and let it cool down for a few minutes, then turned it back on and flopped the bacon over. After 5 more minutes, it was perfectly cooked. There was barely any grease left on the bacon.

I would not recommend leaving the fryer unattended while cooking bacon and I would recommend buying a lower fat bacon, for health reasons as well as for cooking in the fryer but I suppose talking about eating healthy and eating bacon do not fit well together.

Bacon Grease

The photo above shows how much grease was drained from the pan after frying 4 whole slices of bacon.

This will definitely be our new method for cooking bacon.