14 Mistakes People Make When Cooking Sausage In The Air Fryer

Sausages and air fryers seem like a match made in heaven. By using the appliance, you get to avoid the hassle of cleaning a greasy pan afterward, and don't have to worry about hot oil spitting in your face while you cook. However, using an air fryer to cook sausages can be slightly more complicated than you might think. While you can definitely cook sausages like bratwurst in air fryers, as well as other link sausages and patties, your success when doing so is dependent on following a few specific rules. If you don't, your sausages will come out burnt, overly greasy, or poorly cooked.

Like cooking sausages in the oven, air fryer cooking takes a few key steps that you don't have to worry about when sizzling your sausages on the stove. Flipping your sausages, avoiding adding too much oil, and lining your air fryer basket will help you get a more even result and avoid a messy clean-up. Being intentional and specific with your timings and temperature is also key to the success of your sausage, and lord knows we've seen way too many people just throw their meat in the machine at a standard setting and hope for the best. Once you've checked out our mistakes, you'll be cooking sausages in the air fryer perfectly every time.

Air fryers are well-known for their ability to develop a gorgeous brown exterior on any food you care to throw in them. If you're not flipping your food, though, that's just not gonna happen in the way you want it to. By failing to flip your sausages, which can be tempting if you don't want to open your air fryer mid-cook, they won't be evenly exposed to the hot air circulating around the appliance. This will especially be the case if you've lined your air fryer basket, as any lining you use will stop the hot air from accessing the underside of your patties or links.

So, make sure you're flipping your sausages halfway through. A lot of air fryers have in-built timers to alert you when it's time to flip, but if yours doesn't, just set your air fryer to half the total cooking time. Once the cycle finishes, pull them out, flip, and complete the cooking process. If you're using link sausages, it can be helpful to slightly press down on them with a spatula when you first put them in, to give them flatter sides that help you flip them properly.

Okay, so here's the deal. You don't have to split your sausage when you cook it in an air fryer — but doing so definitely helps you get a good result. When you split a sausage lengthways, you give it a way bigger surface area. That surface area is gold dust to the hot air in your air fryer, which will promptly go to work browning it up and creating loads of compelling crispiness on the edges of the sausage. Long story short, the texture of your sausage will be dynamite, and it'll be easier to pop in a sandwich too.

When splitting your sausage, make sure that you're not cutting into it too much. If you do, you'll just completely slice through it and end up with two sausage halves, which isn't really what you want here. Aim to cut about two-thirds of the way through before unfolding it. If your sausagemeat is especially paste-like, cook your sausage with the exposed interior facing up first. This will help to firm up the meat, and your sausage won't glue itself to the bottom of your air fryer.

No-one's under the illusion that standard sausages are low in fat. However, the fat content of some of them may surprise you — and make you realize that you really don't need more. Some major sausage brands have 6 to 7 grams of fat per small link sausage, and when you cook them in an air fryer, a lot of that fat will release itself. Adding more fat to the equation can feel like a logical move to stop your sausages from sticking to the air fryer basket, but when you combine this with the sausage fat, things become way too greasy.

So, when air frying sausages, try your best not to add too much oil to them. A small slick over the surface of the sausage is more than enough to stop it sticking. If your sausage is especially low-fat, it may need a little bit more, but keep in mind that the beauty of using an air fryer is that it allows you to cook and brown food without too much oil. Don't ruin things by drowning your meat in unnecessary fat.

A strange quirk when it comes to air fryers is that people think they're kinda magic. When cooking items like sausages, temperatures can become a little vague, and a lot of folks just hit a setting on their machine or throw them in at the highest heat and hope for the best. Doing this is a surefire way to burn your sausages and ruin your meal. Sausages, like all meat products, dry out when they're exposed to too high of a heat. Their casings can also burn way more quickly than you think, producing an unpleasant result, and all of this can happen before the insides are cooked through properly.

So, it's best to keep things moderate. Start your sausages off at around 360 degrees Fahrenheit, checking them every five minutes or so to see how they're getting on. At this temperature, standard link sausages will take around 10-15 minutes to cook completely. If you find that they're not brown enough when you're nearing the end of the cooking process, you can always give them a quick blast of higher heat for the last few minutes. What you can't do, however, is rectify sausages that have already burnt.

There's a lot of debate about whether you should line your air fryer. Air fryer purists say that doing so will produce poorly-cooked food, with the liner stopping the heat from circulating around your items properly. Those of us who prefer an easier life, though, know that lining air fryers helps make cleaning up afterward a breeze. When it comes to sausages, this is a must. Sausages are particularly fatty, and will likely release a fair bit of grease during their cooking process. If you fail to line your air fryer basket, this grease will pool at the bottom of your machine, and you'll have to get scrubbing once you've finished your meal.

When picking your air fryer liner, though, you need to be careful. There's one type of liner that will ruin your air fryer: Wax paper. Put a sheet of wax paper in your air fryer and the wax will melt, potentially causing a release of smoke and ruining your machine. Stick to parchment paper, aluminum foil, or specially-made air fryer liners. If you're using a paper liner, though, you should never preheat your air fryer with it already inside, as this can cause it to burst into flames, creating a potential safety hazard.

To prick or not to prick? That is the question — well, when it comes to sausages, anyway. A lot of us have been brought up to believe that if we don't prick our sausages before cooking them, they'll explode from the build-up of heat and steam, creating a huge mess in our kitchen. We're here to report, though, that pricking is one of the most common sausage cooking mistakes out there, and there's no reason to be doing it when you cook them in an air fryer.

The moment you prick your sausages, you're inviting all of the moisture inside them to drain out. As the sausage cooks, the seasoned water and fat inside (which gives the sausage all of its flavor) will force itself out of the prick holes, and you'll be left with a dry, flavorless piece of meat. Pricking the casing can also cause it to pull away from the sausage meat as it cooks, which may expose more of the meat than you'd like and leave you with something deformed and shapeless. If your sausages look particularly fatty, you may want to give them a few tiny pricks, but for standard sausages it's just not necessary.

While a lot of people will tell you that you always need to preheat your air fryer, it isn't strictly necessary for everything you're cooking. If you're making something with a longer cooking time and a slower temperature, the extra minute or two it takes to get an air fryer up to temperature won't make a huge amount of difference. With sausages, though, things are a bit different. Sausages are small and cook quickly in the air fryer, so every second counts.

If you fail to preheat your air fryer before cooking sausages, you'll start them off at a lower temperature, which can affect their ability to cook properly. You may find that your sausages cook through more than you'd like, while the outside remains pale and lacking in any crispy texture. As such, take advantage of your air fryer's preheat function, or set your air fryer to the temperature you're going to be cooking your sausages at and allow it to heat up for a few minutes before popping them in. Your sausages and your tastebuds will thank you for doing so.

People tend not to treat sausages in the same way that they might treat other cuts of meat. This is largely because they're processed, which cuts out a lot of the preparation steps you'd normally undertake, like seasoning or marinating them. What you can't forget to do, though, is treat them how you'd treat other meat once you've cooked them. Whether you're cooking them in an air fryer or not, too many people forget to rest their sausages, leaving you with a molten-hot mouthful of food and juice dribbling down your chin.

Resting sausages is important for the retention of their moisture. Like other cuts of meat, when you cook sausages, the moisture inside them gets pushed outward. Because link sausages have casings, that moisture is generally kept inside them pretty well (unless they burst, of course). However, if you then try to bite into them before resting them, you'll find that the juices remain loose, runny, and unincorporated with the meat, and they'll just go everywhere. Instead of suffering this fate, give your sausages around five to 10 minutes to rest before eating. Don't worry about them going cold, as their density and the casings surrounding them will retain their heat.

Working out cooking times for your air fryer can be surprisingly tricky. We all know that they're quicker than using an oven, after all, but how much quicker are they? The truth is that few people are sure, and this can leave folks overestimating how long they need to ensure that their food is fully cooked. This error, which is one of the biggest air fryer mistakes to avoid, will leave your sausages dry as a bone and burnt on the outside.

If you're lucky, your sausages will come with air fryer instructions and cooking times. If they do, it's important to follow them to the letter. When your sausages don't have air fryer cooking times, you can do a little bit of mental math to figure out the optimal time to cook them. Simply aim for 20% less cooking time than what you'd give them in the oven, while simultaneously subtracting about 20 to 30 degrees from the temperature, depending on how well-done you want your sausages to be. If there's any doubt about how long you need to be cooking your sausages for, it's always better to err on the side of caution and go for a lower time and temperature. Don't forget to check them regularly, too.

Look, we get it. You're hungry, and all you want is a big pile of sausages. Or maybe you're cooking for friends, and want to get their food on the table before they get cranky. Either way, we see you piling all of your sausages into your air fryer in one go, and we're begging you to stop doing it. While overcrowding your air fryer is tempting, it's a one-way ticket to your sausages being soggy, flabby, and lacking any browning whatsoever.

Air fryers operate by blasting super-hot air around food to cook it. If your air fryer has too much food in it, the air simply can't move around it well enough to cook it properly — and when this happens, your sausages will start to steam instead of crisp up. This will cause a build-up of water in your air fryer and gray, poorly-cooked sausages. Avoid this mistake by cooking your sausages in batches, wrapping the cooked ones in aluminum foil while you cook the others to keep them warm.

Sausages are usually highly seasoned, but if you want to give yours a little extra kick, it's natural to add some herbs and spices. However, whatever you do, don't just sprinkle them on before you pop them in your air fryer. The reason that air fryers cook food so quickly is because the air circulating in them moves super fast. All of this blowing air acts like a gale in the appliance, blowing off any loose seasonings that might be sitting inside — like herbs and spices that are carelessly thrown onto sausages.

There are ways to ensure that your loose dry seasonings stay adhered to sausages, though. One of the easiest ways to do this is to combine them with a little bit of oil, or pour them into a marinade that you dip your sausages in before cooking. The moisture will help them stay stuck to the meat, and any oil you add will also stop them from burning and help your sausages brown up. Be careful about adding too much oil, though, as this can make things very greasy.

Air fryers are incredibly easy not to clean. Like ovens, we tend to only give them a scrub every now and again, and when they've become visibly dirty. This is especially likely to happen with air fryers if you're lining them every time you use them: After all, if no fat is dripping through to the bottom, then what's the point?

Seriously though, guys, you need to be cleaning your air fryer each time you use it. This is particularly important if you're cooking sausages regularly in your machine. Sausages are full of fat, and that fat will splatter everywhere when they're cooked. Over time, this will start to adhere itself to your air fryer's interior and char. This doesn't just make it difficult to clean next time around, but it may also give your food a weird smoky flavor that you just don't want. Plus, failing to clean your air fryer makes it a hotbed for bacteria to grow and fester. Just give it a wipe, people.

Whether you prefer a sausage patty or a link sausage, you're gonna want yours to be cooked properly. Unfortunately, though, if you're treating their cooking times and temperatures interchangeably in your air fryer, you may be in for a nasty shock. When you do this, you risk under- or over-cooking your sausages, destroying your meal and your trust in air fryers for good.

The issue all comes down to their shape and size. Even if a sausage patty is heavier than an equivalent link sausage, it'll still likely cook quicker because of its flatter, thinner shape, which has greater access to the high heat of the air fryer. Swap your sausage patty instructions for the longer time of a link sausage, and you may end up overcooking it. This is a particular problem with sausage patties because they don't have casings, which causes them to lose moisture more readily than link sausages.

So you're starving, and the air fryer's just finished its cycle. You rush to open the door, see those sizzling sausages inside, and reach in to grab them out of the basket ... and you're rewarded with burnt fingers and a sausage collecting dust on the floor, dropped from your singed paws.

Sound familiar? If it does, you need to stop trying to remove sausages with your hands. People seem to think that air fryers are magic appliances that cook their food without the heat you can expect from an oven. The truth, though, is that air fryers get just as hot as ovens, and trying to remove your food with your hands will just cause you a nasty injury. Instead, invest in a high-quality pair of tongs, like these OXO Good Grips silicone tongs, to fish your food out of the air fryer. You won't have to pierce the food to do so (as you would if you were trying to retrieve it with a fork), and you won't have to reach for any medicinal cooling gels afterward.