5
votes
What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I finally bought an air fryer. I've been vehemently opposed to them as being fad mini convection ovens, and pointless for anyone who already has a fan assisted oven.
I still kind of think that, but the most recent heatwave in the UK made me want something that cooks quickly (i.e not preheating) and without generating too much heat.
I've not used it much yet, but it does noticeably cook things crispier and in less time.
I'm now looking for things that cook particularly well in it, that aren't meat.
I've roasted countless frozen vegetables and potatoes on mine with none to very minimal amounts of oil, and the occasional mozzarella sticks. Despite all the hate I've read about them, I still use my air fryer (an Instant Pot Vortex Plus) more having moved across multiple houses with varying convection ovens (assuming the house even has an oven in the first place)
The fact that it's a small convection oven is exactly why I use it. By the time my convection oven has finished preheating the whole thing for a single meal, I'd be already eating what I cooked if I used the air fryer.
Another is the airflow. Everyone knows about the quick preheat, but the other factor is the air fryer continually vents the air it sucks in which dries out the food. I've personally never encountered a convection oven that does that. Being a small device I can aim the back vent through a window to keep the kitchen smells out without having to open everything in winter.
Been trying out potato recipes recently, tried 2.5 recipes recently.
Probably the easiest one to make. Just grated a potato, washed it, squeeze dried it, pan-fry it in 1tbsp of butter. The way I made it was to let the potatoes brown nicely for the first 5 minutes, then keep stirring and letting it sit for 2 minutes at a time, getting it to a nice mixed crispy/fluffy state. Served it alongside a handful of greens.
1.5: Hashbrown egg hash
Calling this 0.5 since its mostly the same as the above and not sure if this is the right name. While my potatoes were frying up, I diced a bell pepper small and cooked it with the potatoes. Once they were like 75% cooked, I cracked in some eggs and just cooked everything together. Honestly tasted really good and seems fairly balanced to me once I added a side of greens again.
2: Home fries with peppers and eggs
Another way of serving the above basically. I followed this recipe from Adam Ragusea to make this brunch for dinner and I really enjoyed it. Never made home fries before and had too small a pan for my 1 large russett potato but things turned out perfectly crispy and not too greasy since I was pretty conservative with my butter/oil. In his recipe, Adam serves it with over-easy eggs but I just hard boiled them since I was feeling lazy.