The Perfect Settings For Crispy Air Fryer Turkey Bacon

Air fryers and turkey bacon are kind of a match made in heaven, and not just because they're both relatively modern inventions. Turkey bacon is a lower fat alternative to the beloved pork version, often enjoyed by those looking for a way to lighten up their breakfast sandwich or due to cultural or medical dietary restrictions. Meanwhile, air fryers are the perfect way to hack your toasted sandwich game, offering an easy, convenient alternative to deep frying and pan frying with intense, evenly distributed convection heat.

Though turkey bacon offers many of the same salty, smoky tasting notes as its porcine cousin, its significantly lower fat content means that it's a lot more difficult to make crispy. While there are simple tricks to make turkey bacon perfectly crispy in the oven, your air fryer can still turn out beautifully crunchy strips with less time and effort — provided, of course, you use the right settings.

Generally speaking, about nine minutes at 380 degrees Fahrenheit turns those lean cuts of turkey bacon into crispy perfection. Higher temperatures could cause this lean meat to dry out, while lower temperatures would require longer cooking times, which could make your bacon unpleasantly chewy. Preheating your air fryer is also vital for reducing cooking time, ensuring that it's the right temperature to begin crisping your turkey bacon right away. Another of the most common air fryer mistakes to avoid is overcrowding the basket — lay your bacon in a single layer to ensure it heats through evenly.

How thick your turkey bacon is cut plays an important role in how long you have to cook it. Thicker cuts of turkey bacon will need longer to become crispy (about 10 minutes), while thin-cut turkey bacon may only need about seven minutes to achieve the desired texture. Understanding this is vital, because under-cooking thick cuts leads to chewy bacon, while overcooking thinner cuts may char a key ingredient in your iconic breakfast sandwich (which also makes killer savory oatmeal).

If you find your turkey bacon simply isn't getting crispy, there are a few things you can try to get it over the finish line, such as adding a little fat. Just evenly coat your strips with a little melted butter or olive oil before cooking. You can also try flipping them halfway through cooking to expose more surface area to the convection heat, rather than leaving one side in constant contact with the basket's surface. Just open the basket and flip with tongs, working quickly to avoid losing too much heat.

It's also worth remembering that turkey bacon is still bacon, and some of the secrets of getting one type crispy transfer to the other. For instance, draining the cooked strips on paper towels is just as important for turkey bacon as it is for pork. In both cases, this helps wick excess fat away from the meat that could pool on the surface and make it soggy as it cools.