Photo: Claire Lower
Air-fried hard-boiled eggs are a pedant’s nightmare. They are neither fried nor boiled, and yet it would be very hard to pick them out of hard-boiled egg lineup as the thing that is “not like the others.” They are, for all intents and purposes, a hard-boiled egg, and you can make them in your air fryer (which, again, does not fry).
Like most air fryer “recipes,” this is excessively straightforward. You heat the air fryer to 270℉, you put a few cold eggs in the basket, you let them cook for 10-13 minutes, depending on how firm you like your yolk. The eggs in the photo you see at the top of this blog were cooked for 11 minutes, then plunged into an ice water bath to stop the cooking process.
The eggs that come out of the basket are, as you can see, fairly indistinguishable from most hard-boiled eggs. They are not perfect, but they are more than serviceable. They peel fine, though not as easily as Instant Pot eggs, or eggs that are plunged into a pot of boiling water, but I was able to get the shell off of both my eggs with only the tiniest amount of marring. It’s a perfectly reasonable way to hard cook an egg.
One aspect of it that I really appreciate is the lack of water involved. My water bill has been insanely high recently (because it is crazy hot and dry, and I’m trying to keep my garden alive), and every little bit really does help. This method is obviously waterless, and you don’t have to worry about anything boiling over.
You also don’t have to worry about taking the eggs out immediately. Though the air fryer basket stays fairly warm once the cooking time is up, the element quits actively heating, so forgetting them in the basket isn’t the same as forgetting them in a pot of boiling water. As a forgetful person myself, I appreciate this.
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Like all things under capitalism, air fryers vary from brand to brand, so try an egg or two using the above temp and times until you find the sweet spot, and keep in mind that you’ll probably need to increase the time if you add a lot of eggs to your basket. (A dozen eggs fill a basket quite differently than a couple, so add a couple minutes if you’re doing a big batch.)
