You Gotta Air-Fry Crackers
Crackers are not something to cook. They are a fully realized and finished product, ready to eat right out of the box. Place a piece of cheese on a cracker and have a good snack. However, holiday snacks require little more than good. They require a little extra, a little unnecessary and tasty fuzzing.
Like serving a butter tasting or baking a large brie skillet , air- fried crackers – both salty and country club style – are over the top. Soaking salted salt in highly seasoned butter and wrapping crackers in bacon is almost absurdly overkill, but that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Serving cheeky salty
These salines have many names, but most often they are called “baked in oil salines.” The Pioneer Woman calls them “ seasoned with butter crackers, ” and Alton Brown calls them “ spicy salty ” (because they’re spicy). I call them “cheeky salt marshes” because they are funny and a little “over the top.”
The premise for this genre of crackers snacks is simple: Dip the salted in butter and bake until golden brown. You can season with oil if you like. Kitchn makes it easy with plain unsalted butter, Alton spices it with hot sauce and dry mustard, and Pioneer Woman prefers Italian spices and Lawry’s. These are all good options, to be honest. To me? I like Caldo de Tomate (chicken-flavored tomato broth); Trader Joe’s Everything except the Elote seasoning is great here too.
The flavored butter turns into a cracker that can contain surprising amounts of butter without getting wet. A short dip is all you need, but I love to pour and scoop, so a tiny pool of butter forms on top of the cracker.
You can bake them in the oven for 10 minutes, or you can air-fry them for five. The deep fat fryer gives crispier results faster, which is why I prefer it over traditional oven cooking. To make cheeky salts, you will need:
- 1 piece of butter
- At least 1 teaspoon of your favorite condiment, but don’t be afraid to use more than one.
- 1 sleeve of salt
Melt the butter in a small saucepan on the stove, then add the seasoning. Ranch powder, Italian seasoning, Caldo de Tomate are all good. Whisk with a fork and dip the salted mixture into the mixture. Eat this salt and add more seasoning as needed. I usually add a tablespoon of the Crystal hot sauce. Raid the pantry and start crazy with this one. Season and taste until you like the mixture, then dip the crackers into the mixture and scoop them out so that a small pool of butter forms on the cracker. Cook the crackers in the 275 deep fat fryer for 5 minutes (or in the 275 oven for 20 minutes, or in the 350 oven for 10 minutes). Let cool for a couple of minutes and serve. Store leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature. (They are good on their own, with sauce, in soup, or in crumbs in salads.)
Makin Bacon Crackers
Because of the bacon, it takes a little longer to make bacon crackers. You should give the fat a little time to drain from the meat into the cracker, giving a pie-crusty texture (bacon flavored).
Again, the method is simple: grab a club-style cracker – I bought a generic one because the Kellogg workers were still on strike last night – and put a pinch of brown sugar in the center of the cracker, then wrap it in bacon. Fry in the air until the bacon is crispy and tapers around the cracker, giving it a nice hourglass shape. Again, you can cook these crackers in the oven, but the deep fat fryer cuts the cooking time by 15 minutes, which is a good time to wait for the bacon crackers.
The best bacon for bacon crackers is thin and flimsy. Thick bacon won’t wrap around the cracker easily or get crispy, so grab a cheap brand from the store and save the thick bacon for breakfast. You will need 1 / 3-1 / 2 strips, depending on how long your bacon is. My bacon was very long and 1/3 was the perfect amount. You want the bacon to wrap around the cracker one and a half times – the overlap is what keeps the bacon wrapped around the cracker as it cooks, but too many layers of bacon means at least one layer will be chewy and not crunchy. To make bacon crackers you will need:
- 1 or more sleeves of club crackers
- 12-15 strips of bacon, depending on what kind of bacon you have
- About a tablespoon of brown sugar
Cut the bacon in half or in thirds (enough to wrap the cracker one and a half times, then place the cracker at the end of the strip, place a pinch of brown sugar in the center of the cracker and dip it in the bacon. Repeat until you run out of crackers.
Place the bacon-wrapped crackers in a 250 ℉ deep fryer – don’t worry about leaving a lot of space between them, it’s okay if they touch a little. Cook for 30 minutes, until the bacon is crispy and crispy. (You can also cook them at 250 ℉ for 45 minutes.) Let cool to room temperature and enjoy.