My New Favorite Multitasker: The Air Fryer


 
C

ChadVKealey

TVWBB Pro
My wife's love of french fries and onion rings has had her looking at air fryers for the past year. For Christmas, my in-laws got us a small (2.6 quart) Bella model. I figured we'd use it for those things and maybe try wings in it, but I've actually found that it's really good for a bunch of other stuff as well. So far, we've cooked:

  • Fries (regular and sweet potato)
  • Onion rings
  • Tater tots
  • Reheating spare ribs
  • Pork loin chops (brined and not - both came out awesome)
  • Pork tenderloin (marinated in roadside seasoning and cut into 4 oz pieces)
  • Buttermilk biscuits (from a tube - I'm not proud)
  • Chicken fingers (pre-breaded/frozen and fresh chicken breast)
  • Fried shrimp

I know folks love their Instant Pots, but I'm thinking the Air Fryer may be even more versatile (not that I have an IP for comparison, but maybe I need to get one ;) )
 
There are safer ways of doing this. I have seen many people posting images of their air fryers having burst into flames with various levels of destruction of their kitchens. Another reason I don't like these types of counter top items. Most of them are not even UL rated BTW
 
LMichaels said:
There are safer ways of doing this. I have seen many people posting images of their air fryers having burst into flames with various levels of destruction of their kitchens. Another reason I don't like these types of counter top items. Most of them are not even UL rated BTW
Click to expand...

Safety is most often in the hands of the user. FWIW, the one we got does "conform to UL standards" (or the label says it does - see below). I'm not saying all air fryers are UL approved or well-built, but I know a lot of people use appliances like this with little to no regard for the safety or usage instructions. It's basically a small, self-contained convection oven, which is great if you only need to cook small amounts of food. Personally, I'd much prefer this to having a vat of hot oil sitting on the counter.

 
If it doesn't have the UL stamp than it truly is not UL. I would not have a vat of hot oil on my counter either. When I deep fry I do it in various ways (none of which involve some cheaply made electric appliance). Weather permitting I do it outside. Either on my dedicated fry burner, or (believe it or not) I but a cast iron dutch oven or chicken fryer on my grill. It gets perfectly hot, if it splashes the mess is contained and hot oil will not touch flame directly as the flame is covered. Or I simply do it indoors in a dutch oven. You might want to look at a YouTube poster named Boltr or AVe. He tests all kinds of things and some of what he noted about ETL listing vs UL is pretty interesting. I'd just be careful with these types of appliances and like I said I don't have the space to store all these single use types of things when a couple high quality utensils can accomplish the same thing better and more safely
 
You definitely need an Instapot!

I got an air fryer last week, got the ATK recommended Philips model.

I've been enjoying it - did some fries where I parboiled the potatoes, those were OK, did some shrimp & a tuna steak - the shrimp was awesome, I prefer other methods of cooking the tuna steak.... I tried potstickers :) (skip them, they were OK but)... frozen chimichungas & burritos (surprisingly good), Fishdicks are good :). My cousin said corndogs so I tried them & they were good but I def don't need to be adding more junk food to my diet.

I've tried seasoning canned chickpeas in the convection oven before & haven't been super happy with the results - today I just drained a can & poured them in & I'll be working with that again....they turned out very well.
 
Been using our Philips for fries, easier beats doing them in the oven. Tried wings and ckn finger, both of which came out very good. Downside to ours is it doesn't hold much, doing chicken takes a couple batches, fries however work great and 1 batch is more then enough. I find it's a pain to clean up the grease from wings and such, I prefer the kettle for them.

We don't do much fried foods, once or twice a month, including fries. Got rid of the Fry Daddy as it's a waste of oil when you toss it out after one use. For us the Air fryer is a better option.

We do have 3 crock pots that see use a couple times a year.
 
I did a late-night grilled cheese sandwich in the air fryer last night - it turned out decent!

https://www.outsideonline.com/2394148/creative-grilled-cheese-recipes

Did some bacon-wrapped dates in it for lunch today:

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I admit, they'd turn out better over charcoal or even my gasser with a lil smoke. I wound up dipping about half of them in a little bbq sauce, they tasted like pulled pork when sauced.
 
French Fries & Fish sticks - all in the same basket, @ ~375f for 7 min, shake, 5 min, shake, 4 min (iirc):

69740294_10215117076742209_2813816681166536704_o.jpg
 
thx! I got some breaded coconut shrimp to try in it. Plain shrimp (salt & pepper, just peeled) turned out very good, I'm wondering how the coconut shrimp will turn out.
 
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