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Everything about air frying
I think with new users from Reddit coming up to Tildes is time for a new thread about air frying!.
What's your favorite accessory, trick, blog, recipe you like to use with your air fryer?.
I don't really have a favorite recipe or anything, I just kind of enjoy that it works almost perfectly as a replacement for the microwave, toaster, and - at least in some cases - oven. Like, heating up leftovers in an air fryer is just nicer than doing so in a microwave.
And bagels in an air fryer? Less mess. My air fryer does have the worst grate in history to clean, though.
I like to get the food (usually chickpeas) hot in a microwave before air frying, so the fryer's heat is used only for the maillard reaction instead of slowly bringing it to temperature.
I run my air fryer at around 80 C for a min+ to warm up/defrost thin foods before raising it to high temperature. I haven't done side by side comparisons so I'm not certain it's an actual improvement over just starting at 180+ C
A microwave is lot more efficient at bringing up the internal temperature of foods, as it vibrates the water molecules in your foods.
A (convection or regular) over has to heat up the food via conduction from the outer surface to the insides.
The air fryer uses more energy, but this way I don't have to use 2 devices and carry hot food from one device to another. I'm very environmentally conscious, I rescue food and my living room is furnished from mostly second-hand items. But this is something really not worth the hassle to save a little energy. (Leaving frozen food out or in water to thaw first would be a worthwhile step, especially if the food is thick, since it's minimal hassle. You just need to remember that you have something thawing.)
I believe the best method for anything in the kitchen is "whatever works for you!" :)
Cooking at home is still lot better than eating out or ordering in everyday!
I started making oven pasta with mine.
You cook the pasta normally first, in boiling water, then once it's ready you drain it, mix it with some (cooked) tomato sauce and cheese, top it off with extra cheese, throw it in the air fryer for a bit and eat.
Quick and dirty, takes a simple dish and turns it into something so much better.
Edit: picture https://i.imgur.com/6xFGJoU.jpg
We'd call that a pasta bake in the UK, interesting idea to use an airfryer, might have to give that a go. It takes forever in the oven.
Looks delicious, but I feel like this would create a tremendous mess in my fryer. Do you put the noodles et al. directly in the fryer or in/on something?
no i use baking paper
i crumble up a sheet of baking paper, unfold it, and put it inside the fryer. Fill the thing with the dressed pasta, put extra cheese on top, cut some of the extra paper (after i put the pasta in) and throw it in the fryer.
Once it's ready i simply slide the whole thing out from by pulling a corner of the sheet of paper
Brilliant! I'm going to give this a shot some time this week. Quite possibly tonight! I love baked pasta and this is a much simpler way to do it, especially if I'm only preparing one serving at a time. Thanks for the tips!
Pro Home Cooks has several videos on where/how an air fryer shines. His titles might be a little gimmicky, but his content is always super practical. Air fryers really plays on the convenience factor and that's why I and other home cooks really enjoy them. Maybe I'm just an air fryer stan!
One of my favorite uses is for roasting asparagus. I used to think I hated the stuff, but I grew up with the limp, overcooked, bacon wrapped version. The air fryer allows better control I feel to avoid that corpse-fingerization of asparagus. I just toss the washed and trimmed asparagus into the basket, toss right there with some oil and spices (tajin is a new favorite!), then cook on 425 F for about 6-10 mins. Time varies based on amount and thickness, but I start checking at the 5 minute mark and shake the basket around each time I do.
The asparagus stays vibrantly green and has a perfect snap too it! Toss with a little lemon juice and it's perfect.
I honestly don't get it.
I think that half of the excitement people are getting from these is that they are not used to having a toaster oven; the thing that is most exciting about air fryers, IMHO is that they heat up quickly, and can reach high temperatures. But toaster ovens can already do that. You can also speed up the maillard reaction by simply adjusting the rack to bring your food closer to the heating element.
Heck, there are a lot of toaster ovens that double as air fryers as well.
I guess most people are excited about the "frying" part, but generally speaking shallow-frying in a pan yields dramatically better results. The air hot air circulation tends to make things dry out and that texture is more often unappealing than not - to me at least.
I'm not saying this to rain on anyone's parade; I honestly just kind of think I am doing things wrong, and I wanted to hear more from other people who might know better.
Toaster ovens can't do that - convection ovens can do that, but then convection ovens are air fryers so now it's just vacuously true.
The difference between the modern "air fryer" and the old "convection ovens" is that air fryers have the fan elements dialed waay up. What makes them popular is that with many traditional ovens, food ends can end up either soggy or overcooked - and that is user error, but at the same time, a UX principle is that the user is always right. Also, faster is always nicer.
Because the convection element makes things heat up much quicker, food ends up crisper, and with the way most people use them, recipes end up with food that is evenly, and not overly cooked. Faster, too.
It's not frying, in the end, it's more of a super-toaster-oven.
This makes perfect sense to me. Thank you.
I'm agreeing with you, and also want to add on the convince of the air fryer in a single person household. If I wanted to make something in the oven it would heat up the apartment for hours. It also takes way longer to heat up the oven then to throw something into the airfryer.
I'm not sure if you're a family how much better it is, but for a single/two person household I think it can almost replace the oven completely.
You're not wrong that a Toaster oven is incredibly similar, but really, the biggest issue with Toaster Ovens was that the technology was so old - most of us didn't have a toaster oven. A lot of us had a SHITTY toaster oven.
Honestly, that's why I like my air fryer. Not because it's a miracle appliance that does something that can't be done anywhere else. But simply because I used it and got good results.
It's a quick and easy second "oven" for when I want to make french fries but I'm about to throw the cast iron in the oven to finish some steaks. Would a Toaster Oven do the same? Yeah, that's never been the point. The point is that my stupid air fryer is good at its job and no toaster oven I ever owned was. I don't know if the "Counter Top Air Convection" was refined just before the great rebranding, or I just had rotten luck.
However, I have also watched Mythical Kitchen and learned that some Air Fryers are just absolute garbage. So it's probably some combination of inputs. Watching someone struggle to use an appliance with 4 buttons and then make soggy limp flaccid french fries - I'm not surprised they walk away thinking air fryers are bad. But I add a little oil, some homesliced potatoes, and some seasonings, and i get dope crispy potatoes every time and it is not a complicated machine.
Ah, you're probably right about people only having experience with bad toaster ovens. Especially because there are so many terrible $20-30 toaster ovens of dubious quality out there. I might also be biased because I have a fairly nice toaster oven myself.
I get the heat thing, but most of the time you can get that in a toaster oven by simply putting the food directly on the rack.
The oil thing I really don't get. Without oil things don't really get crispy at all - that's when you get the dry texture I was talking about. It seems like you have to put a lot of oil on the food to get it to be crispy instead of dry, so I'm really not sure if I believe that you're actually eating any less oil (though I guess there's a positive in that you're not wasting that oil after you're done cooking).
Maybe this is just a personal taste thing. I'm a lot better than I used to be but there are still things I refuse to eat simply because of the texture.
Excess oil you say? Concept unclear. One sec, let me put down this deep dish pizza. Please elaborate.
My "air fryer" (marketted as such) is just a toaster oven with convection, a fryer basket, and an extra label on the knob.
Its a great device, but not revolutionary in anything more than marketting IMO.
That might honestly be part of it, at least here in Europe. I'd never heard of toaster ovens until I engaged with American content on the internet and I still haven't seen one in person.
I suspect that in Europe most ovens are roughly toaster oven in size already, compared to the giant appliances in US houses.
While some quick searching tells me that US ovens seem to indeed be larger than EU ones, ours are still a lot larger than what the average toaster ovens seem to be. Air fryers (and I suppose toaster ovens) still have the advantage in energy consumption and heat emissions, which is why I'm personally considering getting one.
Our oven heats up the whole kitchen, it must be incredibly inefficient. The air fryer is so much better if I’m only cooking something small, it doesn’t let out much heat at all
(Also on your other comment upthread, I have also never seen or heard of a toaster oven in the UK or Australia)
I feel an extreme kinship with you in this moment.