Maple Bacon Air Fryer Sweet Potatoes

What’s better than air fryer sweet potatoes? Sweet potatoes air fried with bacon and caramelized maple syrup, naturally! This simple recipe makes for a great side dish or breakfast hash to serve with fried eggs. And in case you’re not sold on the title alone, you’ll only need 6 ingredients and 5-10 minutes of prep time to make this one.

How to Make Air Fryer Sweet Potatoes with Bacon

With only 6 ingredients, it’s safe to say you can probably work your way through this recipe without our usual visual walkthrough, but I’ve included it just in case. You’ll find a few notes for ingredient substitutions and cooking method adjustments in the walkthrough. If you’re an air frying pro, feel free to skip to the printable recipe card.

Cube sweet potatoes and season with olive oil, garlic powder, and black pepper.

You’re more than welcome to peel your sweet potatoes, but I like to leave the skin on for texture, fiber, and simplicity. The recipe calls for a pound and a half of sweet potatoes, which is about 3 sweet potatoes.

And in case you’re tempted to skip the olive oil, it really helps brown and cook the sweet potatoes in the first fry. I tested batches with no oil and even tossed with maple syrup at the beginning, and the olive oil batch was by far the best.

Oh, and in case you’re curious about bulking this recipe up with more veggies, check out my roasted brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes recipe. That one includes a BBQ balsamic sauce, but you could stick with the maple and add bacon on top all the same.

Add sweet potatoes to an air fryer basket and top with 4 slices of bacon. Air fry until the bacon is crispy.

I used a 6.5-quart Ninja Foodi for air frying, and it took the bacon about 18 minutes at 350ºF to get crispy. If you have a larger air fryer, your air fryer sweet potatoes and bacon will likely cook faster.

My loaded air fryer tater tots recipe, for example, only calls for a pound of tater tots. The bacon was crispy in 12-15 minutes in that recipe. Cook times will vary. Be sure to check on your bacon early because nobody wants burned bacon.

Set the bacon aside and toss the sweet potatoes with maple syrup and air fry an additional 5 minutes to caramelize.

If you’re making your air fryer sweet potatoes in something like the Ninja Foodi that catches drippings, you can pour them back in the mixing bowl with the cooked potatoes and maple syrup. Who doesn’t love some extra bacon fat for frying?

In this step, you’re looking for the sweet potatoes to get a little crispy around the edges and be completely tender. You should also see some caramelized bits from the maple syrup. Around 5 minutes at 400ºF did the trick for me.

Chop the bacon and toss with the air fried sweet potatoes.

Feel free to add some fresh herbs to your finished air fried sweet potatoes, and you’ll want to salt to taste, even with the bacon. And that’s a wrap. Dig in!

Serving Tips for Air Fryer Sweet Potatoes

The maple bacon components make these sweet potatoes perfect for breakfast dishes. You can fry some eggs and throw on top, serve with proteins like breakfast meatballs and chicken breakfast sausage patties, or with something like a healthy omelette.

These air fried sweet potatoes are especially great this way leftover. I like to fry eggs then throw any leftover sweet potatoes in the skillet for a few minutes at the end.

You can also flex these maple bacon sweet potatoes to work with main dishes like Instant Pot barbecue chicken, reverse seared steak, Traeger smoked chicken breast, or smoked pork chops.

However you end up serving your air fryer sweet potatoes, I hope you enjoy. If you love them, we always appreciate recipe reviews. And as always, leave any recipe questions you might have in the comments at the bottom of the post.