and Criss Cross Fries (from frozen)
The Air Fryers tend to heat up more quickly, cook more quickly and need less heat setting to cook just as well as a conventional oven.
Cooking Instructions
The cooking instructions on the label will often specify an oven and often a reduced time or temperature for a fan oven. The air fryer instructions are not very common, and following the packaging label instructions provided as suitable for a conventional oven won’t be right for an air fryer.
Quicker Cooking
With quicker cooking (than even a fan oven) air fryer, you can reduce the time to cook the food. It can also be helpful to reduce the temperature too.
Cheaper Cooking
This helps save money on electricity because the air fryer doesn’t need to get so hot to start your cooking and doesn’t need to stay on for as long to cook your food thoroughly. There is also less wasted heat because the air fryer is better insulated and has less space to heat unnecessarily.
Cooking Times
With no cooking times on the label dedicated to an air fryer, it can be an unknown quantity, and first-time users can quickly overcook the food.
For example, the Frozen Lidl 4 Breaded Cod Fillets take about 25 minutes to cook at 200°C based on two fillets.
This is too long and far too hot for a typical air fryer to get a crispy breaded coating and piping hot, flaky code fillets from frozen.
The actual Air Fryer cooking time was 16 minutes with the temperature set to 180°C. This cooked two breaded fillets with a nice crisp coating and piping hot yet moist cod in the centre—just perfect and less time and temperature than suggested on the packaging.
Air Fryer Timing
I served the Lidl fish with some Iceland Criss Cross Fries going down. This brings another timing calculation to get both parts of the air fryer meal perfectly cooked and served simultaneously.
Iceland Criss Cross Fries
The 800g Criss Cross Fries packaging is 200°C at 15-20 minutes for a fan oven.
This is far too hot and long for an air fryer to get crispy and adequately cooked crisscross fries from frozen.
You can drop the temperature of the air fryer to 180°C when the conventional or fan oven states to cook at 200°C. The 180°C is also suitable for the fish with a single basket air fryer.
You will also need to reduce the time from the suggested 15-20 minutes to a more precise 8 minutes. This will stop the criss-cross fries from getting too hard and overcooked.
Bringing it all together
With the timings in mind, it’s just a case of starting the fish off for 8 minutes at 180°C.
Preheat the air fryer or add the fish and allow it to heat up. The preheat time is short and doesn’t noticeably affect the cooking time.
Ignore the turn food warnings, as you can use the time you are adding the criss-cross fries also to turn the fish. This means you don’t unnecessarily remove the basket from the air fryer.
With the air fryer 8 minutes complete, you can open the basket, flip over each of the two breaded fish portions and add the criss-cross fries in the space.
Set the timer to another 8 minutes and keep the temperature at 180°C. Wait for the cooking to complete and ignore the turn food advice. The fish has already been turned, and the criss-cross fries don’t need it.
Food Cooked
The air fryer food will be cooked.
It took 8 minutes to cook the frozen criss-cross fries and 16 minutes to cook the frozen breaded cod fillets.
We gave the fish an 8-minute head start, and I was turning them after 8 minutes and adding the criss-cross fries simultaneously. Another 8 minutes means the fish got 16 minutes, and the fries got 8 minutes.
You can check if the food is piping hot; if not, you can add more time. For our 5.7L single basket air fryer, both parts of the meal were cooked perfectly after the times above.
Just plate up and serve (with mushy peas and lashings of freshly ground cracked black pepper)
Tips:
Don’t overcrowd the basket as this will increase cooking time and need more food turning.
A larger air fryer makes the cooking easier to manage by reducing overcrowding and the need to shake the basket as frequently.
Lower the temperature from the conventional oven instructions. 200°C can safely be changed to 180°C if you check the food is piping hot before serving, and this will keep the food crispy without drying it out excessively.
Cut the time back. You can add more time by setting the timer again, but you can’t undo an overbaked dinner. Check the food is piping hot before serving.
Iceland Criss Cross fries from frozen and a preheated air fryer took just 8 minutes at 180°C.
Lidl breaded cod fillets (2) from frozen to just 16 minutes at 180°C
Calories
There is no added fat for cooking this meal in an air fryer, so the calories are the same as for a conventional oven and correct on the packaging.
Each Frozen Lidl breaded cod fillet is listed on the packaging as having 248kcal/1041kJ per fillet.
A 100g portion of the Iceland Criss Cross Fries is listed as having 259kcal / 1085kJ
Cooking Times
