Cooking hard-boiled eggs in an air fryer actually works really well

Mashable will test everything you find on the internet. The Hype Test is where we examine viral trends and reveal what's worth millions of likes.
This story is very simple in concept. This story is simple. I was inspired by a TikTok that talked about air-frying eggs.

It's a strange idea. However, when I first saw the TikTok I thought it might work.

Jackie Hartlaub, a TikTok user posted a video where she air-fried whole eggs at 275 degrees for 15 minutes to create hard-boiled eggs. Although the eggs were not actually hard-boiled in any literal sense, they looked very similar to hard-boiled eggs. It made perfect sense to me. The water is heated to a constant temperature and completely surrounds hard-boiled eggs. The theory behind an air fryer is that it circulates air at constant temperature and cooks the egg the same way every time.

The hack attracted a lot of interest from people, with over 4 million views per day.

Here's how Hartlaub was treated during the entire process. Hartlaub is also known on TikTok as @LowCarbStateOfMind.

It's easy enough. Credit: Image by tiktok/@lowcarbstateofmind

This recipe was my first attempt at it. It would be great to know if I can put eggs in the oven for just 15 minutes and they will come out perfectly hard-boiled. Hard-boiled eggs are something I needed for my salmorejo recipe. It's a Spanish chilled soup.

The eggs were fried in the air fryer at 275 degrees for 15 minutes. Hartlaub's recipe calls for this. After they had finished cooking, I prepared a bowl of ice that I would use to soak the eggs for five minutes. This was also part of the recipe.

Here's how my air fryer egg hack turned out.

That's one good egg. Credit: Tim Marcin / mashable

Look at the end result. It looks just like a hard-boiled eggs. However, there were some issues. Although I did have some difficulties peeling eggs, it was likely to be a personal problem. I'm not a great cook and can't do delicate tasks in the kitchen. A few eggs also had a small amount of egg white that had become a little brown. However, this did not affect the flavor of the eggs.

The TikTok hack was an acceptable way to "boil" an egg. Pre-heating the air fryer to 275° takes less time than boiling. In 20 minutes, I had ready to go eggs. This took 15 minutes cooking time and five minutes in an ice bath. This recipe yielded consistent results for five eggs. That's all I can ask for. You can also adjust the cooking time to make your eggs runnier.

This is how you air fry an egg.