Crispy Air Fryer Asparagus with Lemon & Nutmeg

Learn how long you need to air fry asparagus to make it perfectly crispy and delicious with the additional of fresh lemon zest and one surprising spice!

📋 What's New In This Post (4/30/25) - Added some additional tips and ideas for what to use the asparagus for.

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Jump to:

• Roasting vs. Air Frying
• Ingredients
• What's the Best Temperature?
• How Long Does It Cook For?
• What to Do with Air Fryer Asparagus
• Crispy Air Fryer Asparagus with Lemon & Nutmeg

Ingredients

Here is what you will need to make this air fryer asparagus:

• Asparagus - Any thickness of asparagus will work. I like the thicker stalks. The most important thing is that your stalks are uniform in size so they cook evenly. That's rarely an issue with grocery store purchased asparagus but if you get it from a farm you may have uneven sizes in your bunch. In season asparagus is going to be the best, learn more about asparagus season here. You will need to remove about 2 inches from the bottom of the asparagus stalks as it's too tough to eat, but I have an idea of what to do with them at the end of this post, so stay tuned!
• Lemon - For this recipe you will only need the zest. Save the juice for another use.
• Oil - Use whatever your favorite cooking oil is. You can use a spray oil, or you could put the asparagus on a plate first, and drizzle oil over top of it. You don't want a bunch of oil in the bottom of your air fryer basket, so that's why it's best to add it before putting the asparagus in.
• Whole nutmeg - You may have only used nutmeg in baked goods before but it's more versatile than that. I love how it adds a nice warming element to the asparagus without overwhelming the flavor or being too spicy. Always pick whole nutmeg that you grate yourself. Burlap & Barrel Grenada Gold Nutmeg is my favorite one to use.
• Salt - I like having a salt cellar nearby that is filled with my favorite kosher salt.

If you would like some different seasoning ideas, try any of these:

• Parmesan cheese
• Pecorino Romano cheese
• Flaked salt
• Smoked salt
• Black pepper
• Garlic powder
• Roasted garlic
• Paprika

I have an entire blog post dedicated to seasoning asparagus. Make sure to check out - Best Seasonings for Asparagus

What's the Best Temperature?

Asparagus I like to do at a higher temperature. When roasting asparagus in the oven I have gotten greats result at up to 500 degrees. The air fryer you don't need to go quite as high. In fact, my air fryer does go past 400 degrees, so it can't go as high as the oven.

The goal is having the stalks cooked so they are not crunchy while at the same time getting the tips crispy without burning them. If the heat is too low, you won't get the crispy tips. I found that right at 400 degrees I was able to accomplish both of my goals.

How Long Does It Cook For?

The time really depends on the thickness of your asparagus. I recently had two different types of asparagus - green & purple that were of different thickness.

Here is what they look liked.

It took 10 minutes for the green asparagus to be done. I would call the size they were average. The thicker purple asparagus took an additional 2 minutes. They could have used a couple more but the tips would probably have been burned.

In the oven if I am worried about the tips burning, I just cover them with foil. You can do that in the air fryer too. If you have small asparagus then I would go for around 8 minutes.

🔑 The key to crispy asparagus is not to overcrowd the basket. You don't want to jam so much asparagus in there that you restrict the air movement around each stalk. Try to arrange the asparagus in a single layer. 💡 Bonus Tip - It's not a bad idea to check the asparagus after the first 5 minutes to get an idea of how they are progressing. Give the basket a little shake while you are at it too.

Once you have trimmed your asparagus, if you find that it's still too long to fit in your air fryer, it's totally ok to cut the asparagus in half. Aim to try to make those halves as even as possible. Line up the asparagus together before you cut it. I often leave the rubber band on the asparagus until I am doing cutting it.

What to Do with Air Fryer Asparagus

So eating air fryer asparagus as a straight up side dish is always a good idea. You also could go a few steps further and use this asparagus to make one of my favorite recipes on this whole blog - Asparagus Pesto. In this recipe you cut the tips off the asparagus and add the stalks to a food processor along with Parmesan cheese, pine nuts or sunflower seeds, olive oil, and the juice of the lemon you used for this recipe. That pesto can be used on anything you want as you would pesto made with basil. My favorite thing mix it into large sized couscous that I toast first. You could put it on a chicken sandwich, on a pizza, or with spaghetti and meatballs.

Also don't toss out the ends you cut off. You can save them up and then make my Asparagus Ends soup using the ends to make a stock as the base for the soup with potatoes.