Air Fryer Bratwurst

How to air fry bratwurst

1. Nothing is done to the brats themselves. They go in as they come out of the pack, with no oil and no seasoning - a raw bratwurst is already seasoned inside its own casing and carries enough fat to colour without help, and anything rubbed on the outside is one more thing drying onto a skin you are trying to keep intact. The two minutes are for the rest of it: split the rolls and drain the sauerkraut well before the brats go in, because these are worth eating straight out of the basket and the mustard is the only thing that can wait.
2. Preheat the air fryer to 350°F (175°C).
3. Add the fresh bratwurst to the basket. Lay them in a single layer with a finger's width between them, and do not let two links rest against each other along their length. Four brats want roughly a 9-inch basket floor; six in the same space take longer to reach 160°F, and on this food the extra minutes land on a casing that is already tightening. Cook six in two batches rather than one.
4. Cook for about 14 minutes, turning them over at 7 minutes.
5. Check it has reached a safe internal temperature of 160°F (71°C) before serving.

How to tell when it's done

160°F (71°C) in the centre of the thickest link is the figure. It is USDA's number for raw ground pork rather than anything particular to this recipe, and it is the number printed on the pack. It is also not one you can swap a cue for, because every visible sign on a brat arrives early: the link tightens, shines and picks up dark speckling on the faces that met the basket floor well before the middle is there, so one that looks ready at nine minutes can still be short at the core. Take the reading. The outside is still worth watching, but for trouble rather than for doneness: the first small break anywhere in a casing tells you the surface has got ahead of the middle, and the answer to that is to drop the setting to 325°F (165°C) for whatever time is left rather than to pull the brats out early. The figure does not move because a casing gave way.

Air fryer brats split because the casing finishes before the middle does

Two things are going on inside a bratwurst and they finish at different moments - our Tyson nuggets page calls them two clocks, one running on the surface and one running on how thick the piece is, and that is the right way to look at a bratwurst. What is different here is what happens when the first clock runs out. Our chicken sausage page explains the casing itself: it is collagen, it contracts as it heats and it tightens further as it dries, while the filling inside it is turning water to vapour and asking for more room, so a split is where the two curves cross. The advice that follows there is to stop when the casing goes taut and glossy, and you can, because those links are sold fully cooked and were safe to eat before they went in. A raw brat at that same moment is nowhere near finished. Its middle is still well short of 160°F, with minutes to run, on a casing that is already at the end of what it can stretch.

The clearest evidence that this, rather than the clock, is the real constraint is printed on the packet. Johnsonville's Original Brats carry four sets of directions and all four end at the same 160°F, so what separates them is not a disagreement about how hot to get the sausage. The grill direction is medium-low, covered, fifteen to twenty minutes. The stovetop direction browns the links for about five minutes, then adds half a cup of water, covers the pan and simmers them for twelve. The oven direction is 425°F for nineteen to twenty-one minutes. The air fryer direction is 390°F for ten to eleven.

Read as a set rather than as four separate recipes, those numbers say something none of them says on its own. The oven direction is the hottest on the packet and also the longest, which is less of a contradiction than it looks: moving air hands heat over far more efficiently than the still air of a big cavity, which is the point our conventional oven conversion page turns on, so a fan-driven basket brings the outside of a sausage up to temperature sooner than a hotter oven does. Our Stouffer's lasagna page sets the limit of that in general terms - a fan can only accelerate what happens at the surface, and from there the heat travels inwards at a rate set by the food's own thickness and how well it conducts, which no amount of air movement changes. A bratwurst is thick enough for both halves to count. The casing gets close to the air temperature within the first couple of minutes and then sits there for the rest of the cook, while the middle climbs on its own schedule. So the ten minutes is honest - the middle really does get there. But three of those four methods put something between the heat and the casing, a low flame, a lid and half a cup of water, or a still cavity, and the air fryer direction puts nothing at all, at the highest surface temperature of the lot.

That leaves fewer moves than usual, because a brat closes the three answers this site normally gives when the outside finishes ahead of the inside. You cannot flatten it: our chicken breast page beats a wedge of meat down to an even three-quarters of an inch, and the equivalent here is opening the casing, which is the failure rather than the fix. You cannot stop early and let it coast, because 160°F (71°C) on raw ground pork is not a figure you negotiate with. And you cannot simply ignore the outside and cook to the thermometer, which is the standard answer to a colour that arrives too soon, because on this food the outside does not merely go too dark - it lets go, and what it lets go of is the fat and water the sausage was for. What is left is the dial. Our Tyson nuggets page already makes that trade for the other reason - a gentler 375°F rather than a blast at 400°F, so the middle has time to get there before the outside overshoots - and on a nugget that came out of the factory cooked, overshooting costs you a dry one. Here the same move is not a refinement. It is the only lever the food leaves you, and what it is buying is not texture but an intact sausage. At 350°F (175°C) the casing spends the whole cook further from the point where it gives, the filling makes vapour more slowly, and the middle still reaches 160°F - four minutes later. Those four minutes are the cheapest thing on this page: they are added to the clock that cannot be hurried and taken off the one that ends in a burst sausage.

Converting from an oven recipe

If your recipe is written for a conventional oven, lower the temperature by about 25°F (15°C) and reduce the time by roughly 20% to land near 350°F for 14 minutes. Need a different starting point? Use the conversion calculator.