Make Your Breakfast Granola In The Air Fryer For The Quickest Results

Looking for a fast, but nutritious and wholesome breakfast idea? You can't go wrong with a bowl of granola. Pair this classic breakfast staple of mixed oats, nuts, and seeds with milk or yogurt, and you have the perfect meal to break your fast with.

Traditionally, however, to get tasty and crispy homemade granola, you've had to slowly toast it in an oven for half an hour or longer. Because of the rather significant time commitment, many people opt to take the more convenient road and just buy boxed granola from the grocery store, instead. Well, at least that was the case before air fryers became a modern kitchen staple. With this handy appliance, you can air-fry a batch in approximately 10 minutes.

Thanks to the high heat rapidly circulating in the compact basket, granola comes out fragrant and crunchy not unlike oven-baked granola. It's also a noticeable step up from boxed granola in both taste and texture.

The first thing you'll need for air fryer granola is a granola blend. Combine oats with nuts and seeds in a bowl — try getting creative here, there are plenty of underrated seeds that'll give you more flavor than the usual sunflower or pumpkin seeds. Add whichever sweeteners (like maple syrup) and spices (like cinnamon) you'd like into the mix, as well. 

Once you have your granola blend, prep your air fryer for work by lining the basket with foil or parchment paper to keep the granola from falling through the vent holes in the basket or sticking to it. Keep a bit of excess foil or paper extending up the sides. That way, once the granola's baked, you can lift up the whole batch.

The next important bit: Spread the granola in a single, even layer in the basket only. If you have too much for one layer that's about one-inch thick, separate them into batches. Cook at 330 degrees Fahrenheit until the granola crisps up and is golden brown in color or up until you can smell the fragrance of toasted granola in the air — this should take between eight and 12 minutes. When stored at room temperature, your homemade granola should last for up to a month.

You know you have good granola when it comes out of the air fryer in big clusters. To get such a result, you'll need a good binder. In traditional granola, the role of the binder is fulfilled by cooking oil... which can be a problem if you're reading this tip in the hope of getting some oil-free granola. After all, the chief promise of an air fryer is letting you have shatteringly crisp food using little to no oil at all.

No worries, there are plenty of good binding agents that you can use in place of cooking oil. The most straightforward to use are either honey or any kind of sugar-dense syrup, like simple or maple syrups. However, depending on how you like your granola, you can also use beaten egg whites for something richer-tasting (also has the advantage of being sugar-free) or melted cheese to tip the flavor scale toward savory.

And, as strange as it may sound, you can also use chia seeds as a binder, too. Once combined with a liquid like water or oil, the seeds will become sticky. Toss your granola together with the gelled-up seeds before they go into the basket, and the resulting granola should come out of the air fryer in delicious clusters — perfect for that granola and Greek yogurt parfait you're been thinking of trying out!