Viral TikTok recipe for $1 air fryer breakfast tacos actually rules

Welcome to AirFryDay, where — you guessed it — every Friday Mashable covers the latest trends, dispenses advice, and reviews recipes for your air fryer.

One piece of cheese, four slices of jalapeño, an egg, and a tortilla: The ingredients are simple. Put them together correctly, however, and you’ve got one heck of a breakfast.

The recipe for these $1 breakfast tacos from TikTok user @collegechefron are really tasty and quite easy to make in the air fryer. I can see myself making them in a pinch quite often, especially if I have just a couple of minutes to throw something together. Who doesn’t love a quick and delicious breakfast. Here’s what you need to know.

Ingredients

• 1 taco-sized tortilla

• 1 egg

• 4 slices of jalapeño (The TikTok appeared to use pickled, but I had fresh, which I prefer. Don’t like it spicy? Leave it out.)

• 1 slice of pepper jack cheese (or the cheese of your choosing)

• pre-made, bottled sriracha mayo, or mayo and sriracha, stirred together in roughly equal parts

• whatever else you want to throw on there

Directions

1. Place a tortilla in the air fryer basket

2. Lay down the jalapeño slices on the tortilla so they’re evenly spaced

3. Carefully crack an egg on the center of the tortilla

4. Cut the slice of cheese into four squares, then lay it on top of the tortilla so they’re evenly spaced

5. Air fry at 360 degrees for five to six minutes, so the egg retains some runny-ness

6. Season with salt and pepper

7. Drizzle with sriracha mayo and enjoy

The details

Listen, we’re not reinventing the wheel were. We’re throwing a delicious taco in the air fryer. Here’s how the process looked, in general, for @collegechefron.

How could a cheesy, eggy taco be bad?
Credit: Screenshots: TikTok / @collegechefron

Looks tasty, right? I started by getting everything prepped, which meant slicing jalapeños, cutting cheese (heh), and mixing up sriracha mayo. That took no time at all.

From there, I gave the air fryer basket a quick spray and laid down two tortillas, since I wanted to make two tacos. (My wife graciously films AirFryDay when I record at home and the least I can do is pay my director in breakfast.) Then I laid down the jalapeño slices and began the careful work of cracking eggs onto the tortillas. This is really the only part of the process that takes some skill. It’s not that hard, but you want to crack the egg and open it so the yolk settles directly in the center of the tortilla. That will give you the best chance of the egg not sliding off. Here’s how my air fryer basket looked at this point.

Some egg white slipped off one taco, but that’s not a huge problem.
Credit: Mashable

Next, I carefully dropped some cheese slices on my tacos. There’s not much to say here. It’s putting cheese on a tortilla. Just be sure to not break the yolk and to give the cheese room to melt and not slide off the tortilla. Here’s how mine looked.

Ready to be air fried.
Credit: Mashable

The TikTok recipe called for air frying these suckers for five to six minutes. So after gently sliding the basket into place — do not tip your yolks, friend — I set my air fryer to six minutes and 360 degrees. Since the recipe builds the tacos in the air fryer, that meant they would cook during the preheating process as well, which, I suspected, meant the yolk might overcook in six minutes of active cook time. The TikTok from @collegechefron had a runny yolk and that was what I was aiming for. My air fryer seems to run a little hotter than other models, as well, so keep in mind how your air fryer typically cooks.

Regardless, after about five minutes had passed on my air fryer’s timer, the tacos were definitely done. In fact, my egg had more of a jammy texture, rather than a sunny-side-up that fully runs.

The tacos looked really tasty at this point, the cheese melty and browned, and the tortilla cooked through. I plated a taco, drizzled it with sriracha mayo and seasoned with good pinch of salt and pepper. Here’s the final product.

Good looking taco, in my opinion.
Credit: Mashable

The verdict? It’s a quite tasty, cheap, and very easy breakfast. The total cost per taco likely did come in around $1. Tortillas, eggs, and jalapeño are all pretty inexpensive. If you kept these ingredients on hand, I could see this recipe becoming a staple breakfast.

Sometimes cooking can feel so overwhelming, with complicated procedures that take lots of time. But it’s nice to remember that sometimes, when you’re busy and hungry, you can make something delicious in just five minutes.