Please don’t air fry scrambled eggs.

I’m not sure which axiom to go with here. Let’s not reinvent the wheel; or K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple Stupid; or how about work smarter, not harder.

I guess what I’m saying is, don’t air fry your scrambled eggs. Just use a pan.

There are some for which an air fryer is genuinely useful. Roasting vegetables, for instance. Approximating the high heat of a grill with zero hassle. Even making air-fried foods that are 85 percent as good as the deep-fried version. But the air fryer should not be used for making scrambled eggs. Please, just no.

A viral TikTok from @traveleatrepeatuk used this method. And, on its surface, it seems like it could be worthwhile. Maybe it’s less mess and still delicious? You could just throw everything in the air fryer, walk away, and have breakfast. But I found the method to be time consuming, messy, and it delivered an end-product that was pretty gross. Anyway…here’s how to make it if you want to try for yourself.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs

• about one tablespoon of milk

• about one tablespoon of butter

• half of a bagel

• salt and pepper

Directions

1. Using an oven-safe mug or bowl, beat the two eggs until no streaks remain and everything is well combined.

2. Add the milk to the eggs and mix together. Season with salt and pepper, then mix well.

3. Spread butter on the half bagel.

4. Air fry the egg mixture in the mug or bowl, with the bagel tucked in the basket as well, for about 6 minutes at 300 degrees.

5. After six minutes, stir the egg mixture to incorporate everything together. If the bagel looks sufficiently toasted, you can remove it. Air fry for six more minutes, stir together, and then you’re ready to eat.

The details

Listen, scrambling eggs in the pan is not hard. OK, the infamous Gordon Ramsay scrambled eggs are difficult to perfect, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Pretty much any home cook can make decent eggs in a pan with very little effort. That same person can also toss a bagel in the toaster in half a second.

To dig a little deeper: The air fryer scrambling method isn’t ideal for a few key reasons. First, the eggs air fry unevenly. If you’ve ever put a bowl or mug in the microwave, then you know the bottom and edges heat up much faster than the top or the center of the bowl. That means as you cook eggs in the air fryer you’ll have some eggs that are rubbery and overcooked, while the center remains liquid. Here’s how my eggs looked about halfway through the cook.

No thanks! Credit: Mashable

Notice the film of overcooked egg on top with a cavern down to the liquid egg. Yuck. I mixed the eggs up, then finished cooking them through. At the end of 12 minutes, parts of the egg were edible, while my bagel was a little toasted but not really toasted. So it’s not great but also not the worst thing in the world. Here’s how the final product looked, all plated up.

Not great. Credit: Mashable

Sure, the few edible parts of the egg look…edible. But the whole ordeal was wasteful.

It wasted egg because some of it was caked on to the side of the bowl and other parts were rubbery and difficult to eat. It wasted time because 12 minutes is far too long for scrambled eggs. And then it wasted more time as I tried to clean hardened egg off the bowl.

I’ve seen worse things in the air fryer. TikTok, after all, does come up with some weird stuff. But this recipe, or hack, doesn’t really serve any utility. It’s making the wheel square when the round version works perfectly fine. In other words, keep scrambling your eggs in a pan.