Air-fired bagel chips are so easy and so good

Sometimes air fryer recipes promise to make something store-bought simple to make in your home. Things like mozzarella sticks or tortilla chips that you would probably be better served just buying from the store.

But a viral TikTok bagel chips recipe from @thisisplanetfood is worth making. It's delicious — like better than the store-bought variety — and preposterously easy to make. There's a reason it's racked up more than 13 million views.

The creator calls the final product "cacio e pepe bagel chips," which is clever because it's really just air-fried bagel rounds with pepper and parmesan cheese. But it sounds complicated. In reality, it's simple, cheap to make, and nearly impossible to mess up.

Here's what you need to know.

Ingredients

• 1 bagel

• about 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese

• pepper

• canola oil

Directions

1. Cut the bagel into thin, chip-shaped rounds.

2. Coat the chips with oil then season heavily with ground pepper and parmesan cheese. The amount of cheese you'll need may vary on the size of your bagel, but you want each chip covered in cheese and pepper.

3. Air fry at 350 degrees for five minutes. Enjoy!

The details

First things first, here's how the finished product looked for @thisisplanetfood.

Yuuuuuum. Credit: Screenshot: TikTok / @thisisplanet food

And here is my recreation.

These were cheesy and tasty. Credit: Mashable

Pretty spot on, right? That's the magic of this recipe. It's very easy and super rewarding. The bagel chips are crispy but retain some of that fresh, bagel chew. The cheese and pepper balance nicely and would pair well with all sorts of dips. Anything creamy or cheesy, especially, would work well with the sweet, peppery bite from the bagel.

There is only one real tweak I'd make to the recipe — and it's really more of a tip. You either have to use a lot of parmesan cheese to raise the salt levels of the chips, or you can throw in a pinch of salt to balance things out. Chips of all kind beg for salt and you want to make sure the bagel chips have that addictive, salty quality.

Otherwise this is a perfect air fryer recipe. It's the sort of thing you can start and finish within ten minutes, at most, while other things are cooking. It's the little touch that makes an appetizer perfect — warm, cheesy chips instead of the processed, bagged variety. It's the exact thing you need for your next party.