Homemade breakfast is a special treat whether you eat it in the morning or serve breakfast for supper. Make this Air Fryer Sausage for a quick, savory breakfast protein that pleases everyone.
🍽️ Why This Works
Fast protein. Air fryer sausage links take only five minutes, so you can have that protein ready before the hungry crowd complains.
No turning is required. Air fryer breakfast sausage doesn’t need a babysitter like it would if cooked in the skillet. It thaws and cooks evenly on all sides in five minutes while you scramble eggs or dice up fresh fruit.
Crowd-pleasing. I don’t know if this happens at your house, but at this house when the smell of air fryer sausage is in the room, people I haven’t seen all day come out of the woodwork! Everyone loves a tasty sausage.
🍳 Ingredients
Pre-cooked Frozen Sausage Links | Any brand or flavor of pre-cooked frozen sausages will work for this recipe. If you like the ones with maple syrup flavor, go for it! If you want plain or spicy, those will work too.
⏲️ Equipment and Tools
Air Fryer | This fantastic tool is good for so many things. I love that it can cook foods perfectly from frozen. We have both the Ninja Basket, Ninja Foodi 12 in 1 Basket and the Instant Vortex 7 in 1 10 quart.
Liner | I am a huge fane of the reusable silicone liners. You can see them in use in the photos below. These are a bit heavier than the paper liners, so you don’t have to worry about them flying loose.
🔥 Instructions
Step One. Place breakfast sausages on a liner inside the basket. You can fix eight at a time, maybe more if you have a tray that allows you to stack the sausages so that several layers get airflow.
Step Two. Heat to 400ºF for five minutes, and shake or turn halfway through.
❗ Expert Tips
In a basket-style air fryer, use the liner to keep the sausages from laying in the grease that forms as they cook. This also helps prevent smoking.
With a tray-style machine that looks like a toaster oven, you can cook as many sausage links in air fryer as will fit on the trays.
A convection oven works just like an air fryer only on a large scale. You can fill up a sheet pan with sausage links, spreading them apart so they aren’t touching. You may need to slightly increase the cooking time since it is a larger space to heat and a larger quantity of food. Watch it closely though!
I love how the outside skin crisps up in an air fryer just like it would in the skillet. To make sure you get even crisping yumminess, shake or turn the sausages halfway through.
Cleaning up the air fryer is the part that I dread, but it really isn’t bad at all, especially if you use the liner. It’s especially easy if you give it a quick rinse in hot soapy water right after you finish cooking up the breakfast sausages.
Every air fryer is slightly different so keep an eye on your sausages more closely until you’ve used this method and recipe a few times.
Check your cooking time early and if needed, follow the Air Fryer Cheat Sheet Cooking Times for all recipes as a guideline.
Storage
Keep your leftover cooked sausage in a plastic baggy or airtight container in the refrigerator for up to three days.
Pre-cooked frozen sausage should not be re-frozen once cooked.
Meal Prep
Make enough sausages for several busy mornings in a row and keep them in a handy zipped plastic bag in the fridge. You’ll be able to pop them in a microwave and reheat them in thirty seconds before you run out the door.
Stock up on frozen breakfast sausages when they go on sale so that you can have hot, savory sausages with your breakfast any time you want. They cook so fast, there is no reason not to throw some in the air fryer on those busy days!
Making these ahead of time allows you to quickly add a few crumbles to the Microwave Scrambled Eggs to feed your family in two minutes before heading out the door in the mornings.
Substitutions
If you cannot find pre-cooked frozen sausages, you can use raw sausages. Prick them a few times with a fork, and then cook them for 8-10 minutes shaking or turning halfway through. It takes a little bit more time, but the results are equally delicious.
Pre-cooked frozen patties or raw sausage patties will also work in this amazing machine. Adjust cooking time as needed. Use the patties to make your Homemade Sausage Egg Sandwiches.
Serving Suggestions
These pair perfectly with almost any breakfast food! Scrambled eggs, omelets, Air Fryer Waffles, quiche, hash browns, toast with jam. The possibilities are endless. Try one of these delicious favorites:
Cheese Danish Starbucks Copycat
Copycat Air Fryer Krispy Kreme Donuts
Baked Eggs with Ham in Muffin Tin
Recipe FAQ
Yes. In a basket air fryer, you just need five minutes to cook pre-cooked sausage from frozen. Make sure to shake them halfway through. That’s less time than the skillet.
The process is so easy! Put your sausage links in the air fryer. If you have a liner, use it to raise the sausages slightly off the base so they aren’t sitting down in the grease that will cook out. Cook your sausage links for five minutes at 400ºF, shaking halfway through the process.
400º F is perfect to cook frozen sausage links in the air fryer.
Some air fryers do not come with liners and the grease from the sausage smokes. Frozen sausage links have less grease, but you should pay attention to the instructions on your air fryer to prevent smoke or grease fire.
Five minutes at 400ºF.
Our instructions are for pre-cooked frozen sausage only. Preheat the machine if possible and then cook the frozen sausage links for five minutes at 400º.
It takes about five minutes to cook frozen breakfast sausages in an air fryer. At the five-minute mark, you can check them with a probe thermometer to make sure they are 160ºF if you are concerned.
This depends on the individual sausage brand. You should always read the ingredients on the label if you are serving someone who needs gluten-free food. Look for wheat, rye, barley, or spelt. These ingredients contain gluten and are found in some but not all sausages.
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Air Fryer Frozen Breakfast Sausage Links
Equipment
Ingredients
- 8 Frozen Pre-Cooked Breakfast Sausages
Instructions
- Place breakfast sausages on liner inside air fryer.
- Heat to 400 degrees for 5 minutes, shake or turn half way through.
Notes
Nutrition
Hi!
Ginny Collins is a passionate foodie and recipe creator of Savor and Savvy and Kitchenlaughter. Indoors she focuses on easy, quick recipes for busy families and kitchen basics. Outdoors, she focuses on backyard grilling and smoking to bring family and friends together. She is a lifelong learner who is always taking cooking classes on her travels overseas and stateside. Her work has been featured on MSN, Parade, Fox News, Yahoo, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and many local news outlets. She lives in Florida where you will find her outside on the water in her kayak, riding her bike on trails, and planning her next overseas adventure.
Thank you for this recipe. This was the perfect addition to my Sunday brunch!