My-Airfryer.com

Blog

AirFryer Fire Risk
Cosori has discovered a fault in some of their air fryer models that can cause internal cables to burn and produce a fire risk.

Not all of their air fryers are affected. If you own a Cosori air fryer, it is essential to check if you have one of the models affected by the fault and not to use it.

Free Replacement

If your air fryer is affected, it must not be used. A free replacement will be available if you register with cosori your affected appliance.

Affected Models

The list of affected Cosori air fryer model numbers is quite long, and it is segmented by air fryer model size to help narrow down the specific models.

3.7 QUART
- CP137-AF
- CP137-AF-RXB
- CP137-AF-RXR
- CP137-AF-RXW
5.8 QUART
- CS158-AF-RXB
- CS158-AF-R19
- CP158-AF
- CP158-AF-R19
- CP158-AF-RXW
- CP158-AF-RXR
- CAF-P581-BUSR
- CAF-P581-AUSR
- CAF-P581-RUSR
- CAF-P581S-BUSR
- CAF-P581S-AUSR
- CAF-P581S-RUSR
Other Models
- CO137-AF
- CO158-AF
- CO158-AF-RXB
- CP258-AF
Checking Recall Cosori Air fryers

You can find the model number on the base of the machine. You need to place the air fryer on its back to the side to see the label on the base. With the air fryer on its back, look for the ‘Manufacturing Batch Number’ (B/N). Both the model and batch numbers need to be listed for the air fryer to be eligible for replacement. Make a note of these codes and head to the Cosori AirFryer Recall website to register your machine.
February 26, 2023
Air Fryer Roast Potatoes

Yes, you can make good roast potatoes in the air-fryer. These air fryer potatoes are crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle, and they use a lot less fat than traditional roasties and cook in the air fryer. We guide you through making the air fryer roasties from start to finish.

Potatoes

It all starts with the potatoes. The ones used here are just Tesco’s brand, locally produced. Nothing special, just all-rounder potatoes. These particular ones are grown by Giles Edwards in Hereford. The variety is ‘Nectar’. But you can use whichever variety of potato you have to hand. They will all roast up nicely in the air-fryer.

Peel

Peel the potatoes. You don’t need to whittle down the potatoes to fries; remove most of the skin. A French peeler (Amazon) is easy to use, cheap to buy and dishwasher safe. It makes short work of peeling potatoes for roasting. At this point, you can also cut the potatoes. You want them all around the same size. No need to cut the smaller ones; the larger ones can be cut in half. Huge ones may need to be quartered.

Par Boil

To get the best roasties, you should parboil them. The parboiling will partially cook them to make the inside fluffy. You can also get a rough surface that better browns up in the air fryer. The parboil is not to thoroughly cook the potatoes, and you only want part cooking.

Place the peeled and cut potatoes into a pan of cold water. Place a lid on the pan and heat the water. Boil for 5 minutes and check with a sharp knife. Poke the potato and if it resists the knife, give it another 5 minutes and check again. When the potato gives less resistance to the knife, they are parboiled. Don’t overcook, as they will mush up later.

Drain and Shake

With the potato par boiled, drain off the water.

I like to keep the water for cooking other veg, reconstitute stuffing mix or making gravy from granules. As they roasties are often cooked as an accompaniment the water may be useful for some or all of the other cooking jobs.

One of my tips

Sprinkle salt on the drained potatoes and let some of the steam escape. Place the lid on the pan and shake the potatoes. This will rough up the outside of the parboiled potato to help with the browning. Start with a gentle shake and shake more if necessary. This will all depend on how much parboiling you did and the type of potato you used. This is why you check the part way of the boiling and the same for the shaking.

Remove the pan lid and allow more steam to escape.

Air Fry

It is now time to air fry the roast potatoes. Add plenty of fat to the air fryer, two or 3 tablespoons for 12 roast potatoes. Pre-heating the air fryer is unnecessary, but you may have just removed the chicken, and it will already be hot. These potatoes don’t mind if you don’t pre-heat the air fryer. Add the potatoes into the air fryer basket with the oil and close the drawer. Set the temperature to 190°C or 375°F and time to 25 minutes.

Don’t over crowd the air fryer basket with potatoes. The air needs to flow around and below them to pick up and atomise the oil. This will make them crispy. If potatoes are touching, move them so they are not to allow all of them to fully roast.

Another of my air fryer tips

After about 15 minutes, open the basket and turn each potato over. You should see a light and darker side to the now-developing roasties. After 10 minutes, they should be done. You can add more time if you think they need more but be aware of the other things you may be resting/cooking.

Program

If you have a ‘Roast’ button or roasting program feature, now is the time to use it. Don’t worry if you only have the air-fry option; this works perfectly for roasties.

Serve

When the 25 minutes is up, they can be ready to serve. Hot roast potatoes with a soft centre and crisp outside. All with less fat and less oven time. Cheaper to cook, and it doesn’t seem so bad to make roast potatoes midweek in the air-fryer.

Cooking Times

The roast potatoes can take around 25 minutes at 190°C / 375°F in the air fryer. Check on them to turn them over after about 15 minutes. You will then see how well they are browning up.

The parboiling takes about 10 minutes but check regularly with a knife to ensure you don’t thoroughly cook them. You want them to become less resistant to a knife.

Leaving the potatoes longer with the lid off to stop steaming can help make them more crispy in the air fryer.

Larger potatoes take more parboiling, and keeping them a similar size ensures they all cook at the same rate.

January 3, 2023
Klarstein AeroVital
Your air fryer may live on your kitchen worktop and take pride and place in your kitchen. With so many basket air fryers looking very similar, it is good to see this rotisserie mini oven looking a little different.

Easy Reach

Why not have a kitchen appliance that stands out and is functional? Air frying ovens work more like a traditional fan oven but are much smaller, more power efficient and stand on the kitchen worktop. The extra height at the air fryer oven is located less bending down to reach in or retrieve the cooked food. A mini oven-style air fryer is similar to operating a conventional oven, and they have the advantage of a window on the food, making the oven feel more traditional.

Rotisserie

The rotating skewers function called the rotisserie, means the food is constantly turned to give an even cooking. Ideal for air frying to roast chickens, and not having to flip the chicken part way through the cook is a real advantage for some.

Looking good

For so many, an air fryer that looks good on the kitchen side can be necessary. It plays a big part in your kitchen, cooking the meals for your family. A kitchen appliance that you will see every day.

The Klarstein AeroVital Easy Touch is one air fryer you should look at. It is a mini oven type of air fryer with a rotisserie function and looks different. It measures 33cm x 37cm x 38cm on the outside, meaning it won’t take up considerable space on the worktop but can still cook a chicken. The internal measurements are 20cm x 25cm x 25cm, so two 7″ pizzas would also fit.

Features

The volume of the Klarstein is described as XXL, and for this model, its capacity is 14 Litres.

The appliance has 16 Programmes that include
- chips
- popcorn
- thawing
- chicken rotisserie
- chicken wings
- cakes
- dehydrating
- rotisserie
- steak
- pizza
- crisps
- keeping warm
- fish
- toast
- vegetables
- biscuits
You can find the cool touch and cool-looking Klarstein AeroVital on Amazon.
December 16, 2022
Air fryer that steams food?

Is there an air fryer that gives crispy food but can also steam food to keep the nutrients?

Air frying

Air frying uses much less fat for frying food than deep or even shallow frying uses. The food absorbs less fat and still comes out extra crisp and crunchy on the outside.

Air frying is seen as a healthier way to cook food that would typically be fried.

Steaming

Steaming food is a way to cook food through with only steam. Typically this could be fish or vegetables, as these work well being steamed. Food that would usually be boiled can benefit from steaming instead. Boiling vegetables means the goodness from the food leaches into the water and is potentially lost from the meal. Steaming food uses much less water than boiling, and fewer nutrients are lost to the steam.

Steaming Air Fryer

Food, when steamed, is a healthy way to cook; air fryers also have their place in healthy eating.

Combining a steamer with an air fryer sounds like a perfect machine, and it could steam cook the food and finish the outside with the air fryer crisper—or steamed fish with the char marks from the air fryer heating grill. An air fryer that steams your food sounds like a fantasy machine, but one is available.

Not only do you get the cost savings when using the air fryer in place of a traditional oven, with the health benefits of air frying over deep frying. You can steam the food to lock in the goodness usually lost in the cooking water. Could this be the future of air fryers?

Tefal

Tefal has a 3-in-1 model air fryer-steamer-grill machine. It looks like a classic basket air fryer but can steam the food. With many machines offering 9-in-1, 12-in-1 and 7-in-1 programmes, this Tefal 3-in-1 accurately represents the three different cooking methods: Airfry, Grill and Steam.

The tagline for the 3-in-1 is ‘Crispy, Juicy, Tender, ‘ which is quite clever as it tries to portray the critical points of the three distinct functions available to cook the food.

The Tefal 3-in-1 is an XXL basket air fryer with grill and steam functions, combining the functions into a single machine. The Tefal XXL size of the 3-in-1 air fryer is 6.5L and will serve up to 8 people. Ideal for larger families and chefs who like to be more adventurous in the kitchen and cook more than just fries.

Find the Tefal 3-in-1 Airfryer, Steamer and Grill here on Amazon.

December 16, 2022
Tefal Actifry

Vs the modern basket-style air fryer.

Should you upgrade?

Our first air fryer was a Tefal Actifry—the original design with a paddle that moved the food around as it was cooked by hot air.

Features

A nonstick food container, a heating element with a removable filter, and quickly detachable parts made the actifry easy to clean. The clear lid allows you can see the food brown as it cooks. The rotating paddle meant the food was automatically turned and flipped over as it cooked with hot air. Very little oil was needed to get crisp fried food.

Needs Improvement

This early design of the air fryer didn’t get much use from us after the initial honeymoon stage. It cooked fries, chips, and sausages, and we even followed some of the recipes supplied. The stirring paddle could mash the food as it rotated, but forgiving that it was something else that just didn’t fit in so well for us.

The size. The original actifry was quite large for the size of the cooking area, and it looked like the modern cylindrical or box-shaped basket air fryers available today. The unique shape of the early air fryer wasn’t particularly space-saving, and it would take up too much space in the cupboard that could be better used for other kitchen gadgets.

Long term

For those that persisted with the early models of actifry air fryers, reports of broken stirring paddles are not uncommon. The spare paddle is readily available on Amazon and is simple to replace. There is still life in the original tefal actifry if you have one.

Actifry vs Airfryer

The actifry solved the problem of turning the food automatically with a rotating paddle. The basket air fryers need a manual intervention of the basket shake or flipping the food part way through cooking.

The new basket-style air fryers are much more space efficient for the amount of food you can cook in one go. Due to the shape of the actifry it is impossible to cook a whole chicken. A reasonably sized modern basket-type air fryer can simultaneously cook a whole chicken and some potatoes.

Should you upgrade?

What you will lose is the automatic food turning that the actifry offers. There are air fryer ovens that have a rotisserie feature that solves that problem.

Roasting Chickens in the basket-style air fryer is an everyday use for us. A cheap roast is ideal for the air fryer; you just can’t fit a chicken into the original tefal actifry.

Cooking times and costs are very similar between the two kitchen devices. One is fully automatic, while the other has the potential to fit more oversized food items in for cooking.

If you are happy with your actifry, you may not find upgrading to the newer style oven or basket air fryer advantageous.

If you have a broken actifry paddle, it may be more cost-effective to fit a new paddle sourced from Amazon.

December 15, 2022
How does an Air Fryer work?

These magical little cooking machines can save you money on electricity and save calories while making crispy and tasty fried food, but how do they work?

Mini Oven

The air fryer is a mini oven, a significantly scaled-down version of a conventional fan oven but with one big difference.

The small size of the air fryer means it can heat up more quickly. There is also less space to keep it hot while it cooks the food. These factors help it use less electricity to cook the same food as a conventional oven, with one exception. The air fryer is limited in its space, and this limited space over a conventional fan oven is one of the reasons it can be more economical to run.

Big Difference

The big difference between a conventional fan oven and a worktop air fryer is the location of the heating element. The air fryer has its heating element at the top of the oven, and a typical fan oven has the heating element at the back of the oven wall. The heating element and fan on the back of the oven wall are best for a large oven to get an even cook.

The air fryer heating element is at the top of the machine, directly above the food basket.

The air-fryer has a heating element and fan at the top of the oven facing down on the food. This large heating area with a powerful fan forces hot air to circulate the food as it cooks. This is why you must regularly shake the basket for fries or flip the burgers, as it primarily heats on one side.

The air fryer fan can be seen directly behind the heating element

The Basket

The air fryer basket has a perforated tray at the bottom, which serves two purposes not present in a conventional oven. The perforated tray lifts the food from the very bottom of the oven, allowing the forced hot air to circulate the food and into the space below.

The space below the air fryer’s perforated tray is where the minimal quantity of added fat is stored. Only a minimal quantity of extra fat must be added to the air fryer, and some foods don’t need extra. The hot forced air blows tiny droplets of the added oil around the basket and onto the food.

This is how you can air fry with such a small amount of fat. The added oil is atomised a slight coating is efficiently applied to the food surface. It is not the same cooking as deep fat frying because so little added oil is deposited onto the food.

Not overcrowding the air fryer basket allows for a better and more complete circulation of the hot air to the very bottom of the basket.

The Food

An air fryer can cook nearly all the food a conventional fan oven can cook. The exception is usually frozen or fresh pizza; they just don’t fit inside the air fryer. They come out lovely when you find a pizza that fits in the air fryer. Much better than a conventional fan oven can do pizza.

No need to add any fat to pizzas. Not all food needs added fat; most don’t. Oven-ready fries and frozen coated fish or chicken work well without adding fat. Roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings from scratch need oil added to cook correctly.

Forced Air

The hot oil-laden forced air in the air fryer basket is ideal for making the food crispy. This is unlike the deep fat fryer, which needs a lot of oil to fry the food to a crispy state. A conventional fan oven can’t generate enough air force to atomise and deposit the fat on the food.

Wattage

An air fryer has a wattage element similar to a conventional oven, and the element-to-oven size ratio makes the difference. A similar power heater with a much smaller area to heat makes the air fryer more economical to run. The powerful fan in such a small space atomises the hot oil to coat the food and make it crispy.

Rear vent

You will find a vent on the rear of your air fryer. This vent allows the moisture from the food to escape the oven. This moisture extraction further helps keep the food crispy by drying it out as it cooks.

Programmer

The programmer or control panel has buttons and displays to provide timers, shake reminders, temperature regulation and different modes. These modes can alter the fan speed and automatically switch the heating element on/off.

December 12, 2022
Air-fryer Cooking Times

Compared to a conventional fan oven and a deep-fat fryer for frozen chips.

Comparisons

Comparing cooking times between the air fryer and a conventional oven can help you adapt the oven-only instructions to work in the air fryer. While manufacturers of the packaged food we buy are catching on to the air fryer, some are slow to adapt. This can be an issue when you want to air fry some packaged food that doesn’t mention air fryer times on the packaging.

Less time.

The comparison for frozen potato chips uses a shorter cooking time in the air fryer, but you can also reduce the temperature by 50°F (10°C) and still get excellent results. The air fryer cooks food extra crispy and dialling down the temperature and the time can give you outstanding results. You can cook longer if needed but can’t uncook the overcooked food.

Check the basket regularly. Particularly with fries that need a regular basket shake, you can check the colour of the food. This can sometimes be an indicator, but the internal temperature defines when it’s properly cooked.

Crinkle Chips

Iceland, frozen crinkle chips are listed as cooking in a conventional, pre-heated fan oven at 200°C for 18 to 20 minutes.

In the air-fryer, this time is reduced to 16 to 18 minutes at 200°C with a shake halfway through.

Both times are based on a quarter of a bag.

A conventional oven can cook a whole bag simultaneously as a quarter of a bag of chips. A medium-sized air fryer could be overcrowded and take longer to cook than a quarter of a bag, and it will need more shakes during the cooking, and the smaller capacity of the air fryer will need more time for a more significant portion of chips.

Deep fat fryer

As a fair comparison, the deep fat fryer is also listed on the frozen crinkle chips cooking time.

175°C for just 3-4 minutes. You have the oil pre-heating time to add to the overall time, but don’t put the chips in until the deep fat fryer has reached the 175°C.

You don’t need to add fat to cook the frozen chips, so there is no accurate comparison.

Cooking temperature

I regularly reduce the listed cooking temperature, even if this time is shown explicitly for an air fryer. Cooking at 50°F (10°C) less can help to save costs. The quicker heat up time, the lower electricity required to meet the lower temperature and sustain it all help. Only by a small amount, but it begins to add up each time. You still get crispy food, and there is less chance of burning. If reducing the temperature didn’t provide good results, there is no reason to cook it a bit longer or crank the temperature by 10°C/50°F for the final few minutes.

Pre-heat

For frozen potato chips, crinkle, straight, criss-cross, and waffles. These are safe to put in the air fryer from the cold. Use the energy the air-fryer takes to get to its set temperature to cook your food. This head-start on the cooking will mean the overall cooking time will be less. Less cooking time, less temperature, and less warm-up time can all help reduce costs. Don’t be afraid to use the pre-heat time to cook your food if you want to reduce your cooking costs.

Foods such as frozen fries will respond well to using the pre-heat for cooking but bacon would benefit from pre-heating the air fryer before adding the food. Bacon is more sensitive to the air fryer cooking and a pre-heated bottom plate will help the underside cook more evenly.

December 11, 2022
Parsnip Crisps in the Airfryer

Making parsnip crisps is relatively easy to make in the air fryer. We love those veg crisps from the shop, so we decided to try to make our own at home.

Home Cooked

Home-cooked can be cheaper than store-bought and can also help reduce waste. A couple of parsnips left over from a roast that needed use. What could be made with a couple of sad parsnips? Parsnip crisps sprang to mind.

Air Fryer

The air fryer is ideal for making food crispy, from frozen fries to roast chicken. The air fryer gives you crispy chicken skin and crispy fries, and this would be no different for a parsnip, sliced and air-fried.

Perfect Slices

Perfect slices of parsnip are required to make the air fryer veg crisps. They need the same thickness, whether you slice them lengthways or circular slices. It isn’t easy to get perfectly thin sliced parsnips, and the fibrous nature means you need a sharp knife and plenty of patience. There is a cheat to perfect slices…

The mandolin. We have this one from Amazon. It has many attachments, but I just needed the standard slicer for the parsnips. I didn’t peel the parsnips; I just topped and tailed them. It is cutting off the top and the end that looked past its best. The mandolin handle has a spike that holds the veg tight as you swipe it across the sharp cutting blade. It’s straightforward and quick to get perfect slices. The blades are very sharp, and using the handle keeps your fingers safe.

Sliced parsnips, ready to cook. Use the slicer blade attachment on your mandolin.

Add fat

Parsnips taste better when roasted in fat. You can get the same flavour (with much less fat) with an air fryer. But you must add fat to get the full flavour from the parsnip crisps. Add 2 Tbsp (Tablespoons) of cooking oil for four smaller parsnips. Don’t worry if you add a little too much oil. The excess won’t get used and stays in the air fryer’s bottom. Not enough oil and you won’t get the best parsnip chips, but they will still be good.

Toss the parsnips in the oil while in the mandolin container or transfer them to a bowl for tossing. Whether they are long, thin slices or small circles, ensure all of the parsnip slices are coated with oil.

Air Fryer Basket

Place your perfectly (uniformly) sliced and oiled parsnips in the air fryer.

Don’t overcrowd the basket, but they can overlap slightly. As the cooking progresses, you will shake the parsnips to move them around, and they will shrink back. As they shrink as the moisture is removed, more space will appear around the parsnip slices, making them easier to shake and move around to reduce the overlap.

Cooking Progress

as cooking progresses, keep opening the air fryer basket every 5 minutes to shake and separate the slices. You can see in the picture above how much space has now appeared around the parsnips. But you must ensure each slice gets a good cook without overlapping another slice. This ensures they finish cooking at the same time.

Cooking time

Set the air fryer to 280°F (140°C). Because they are so thin, the crisps can overcook very quickly. The regular shaking of the basket also lets you check their progress. You can always turn the temperature down by 50°F if they get crispy edges but are still soft in the centre.

Overall, the cooking time was 17 minutes.

Cooking long and low helps to control the cooking. Too hot, and they will blacken before you realise they are overdone. A cooler cook helps to dry the crisps out more evenly and gives you a better chance to catch them at just the right time. If they are cooking too quickly, reduce the temperature. Adding more time to the cook is easy, but you can’t take away the temperature.

The delicious aroma of roasted parsnips alerted me to the best time to stop the cooking. I had set the air fryer timer to 20 minutes, but at 17 minutes, I could smell the lovely aroma of the parsnips emanating from the machine.

Opening the air fryer basket mid-cooking is not a problem, and you get very little heat loss from the small basket when it’s open. Not having a window on the cooking progress means you must check by opening the fryer drawer to see the food.

You can’t beat homemade for knowing what went into the meal with no preservatives or additional salt (unless you want to). Tastier than the shop-bought too 🙂

December 11, 2022
Cooking cheaper in the Airfryer?

Can using an air fryer be cheaper to cook your meals?

Does an air fryer save money?

There are many questions and lots of talk about how air fryers can save you money and how they are cheaper to run. But is this true, and how would you know?

Smaller Oven

An Airfryer can be considered a small oven for the running cost calculations because it is a small oven. Like a conventional fan oven, a fan-assisted electrical heating element is used for cooking food. There is a direct comparison between a large fan oven and the smaller air fryer oven.

Small = Fast

The smaller size of the air fryer makes the heat-up time shorter, saving money on the cost of heating the 3 rungs, space and interior of the conventional fan oven. Less heat means less cost. The smaller size of an air fryer also concentrates the heat it generates from electricity into a smaller area. This area is the air fryer basket or air fryer interior. Keeping the heat in a smaller space means less heat is needed to attain the same temperature as in a larger space.

The small size of the air fryer is the key to saving money while cooking your food.

But

There is always a but, and this one is it. The But comes from the small size of the air fryer, and the feature that makes it more economical to run can also be its downfall. The ‘But’ can make it cost more to cook with.

The situation arises when cooking a large quantity of food. The air fryer cooking space is limited, which means a meal for one, two, three or four people may be possible and highly dependent on the size air fryer you have. A conventional oven will quickly cook for 6 or more in one go.

Cooking large meals, maybe meals for 4 people, in a smaller air fryer will need two runs of the air fryer. Effectively running the air fryer twice will use twice as much electricity. It may be more economical to heat the main oven to cook the big meals in these situations.

This limitation is further evident with a smaller air fryer or even more people to feed. You won’t be saving as much, or maybe breaking even to the worst case of costing more when using the air fryer for more significant numbers of hungry people to feed.

Overcrowding

Another But with the air fryer is down to overcrowding of the food in the air fryer. If you have overcrowded the food in the air fryer, it will take longer to cook and cost more. This is due to the restriction of hot air circulation around all the food to cook it properly. An overcrowded air-fryer basket will take more time to cook the food. It may have been better to spread it out and put the food in a conventional oven.

You start to erode the cost savings to the point of it becoming an additional cost over a conventional oven if you overpack or multi-run the air fryer.

Microwave Oven

The microwave oven can be cheaper than the air fryer, but they cook in two different ways. It’s not a fair comparison as they each excel in particular ways. For crispy food, the air fryer wins as the microwave can’t compete, and you don’t get crispy in the microwave.

Defrosting frozen wet meals like frozen curry, lasagne, and all the microwavable ready meals is cheaper than cooking in the microwave. No browning is needed, and there are usually only one or two portions to cook.

What the microwave can do more cheaply than the air fryer is bake potatoes. You don’t get a crispy skin on microwave potatoes, but they cook cheaply.

Winning Combo

The winning combo for microwave-baked potatoes is finishing them off in the air fryer with some oil rubbed into the skin. You can get the best of both worlds with a combo.

Quantity

The ‘But’ to the cheaper air fryer cooking appears when you cook 4 or 6 large baked potatoes in the microwave and finish them off in the air fryer. With many potatoes to bake and crisp up the skin, it may work out cheaper to switch on the conventional oven and do all 6, 8 or 10 simultaneously.

This is where the conventional oven wins, and that is quantity. Large quantities that are too much for the air fryer push the air fryer cost higher, and you will get better results in an air fryer.

Cooking for one

When cooking for one or two, a medium-sized air fryer is much cheaper than a conventional oven. A larger air fryer will cook for more. It can be too easy to overcrowd the basket or run the air fryer twice to get it all cooked. You may have been better off cooking it all in the main oven.

Cheaper Bills

Knowing which meal is best for the air fryer to cook will help you save money and keep the electricity bills down.

December 7, 2022
Cooking Pork Belly slices in the Airfryer

Can you cook pork belly slices in the air fryer?
How long do you cook pork belly slices in the air fryer?
And at what temperature do you cook pork belly slices in the air fryer?

We have the answers to your questions from our time cooking tasty pork belly slices in the air fryer.

Pork Belly Slices

Thick slices of the pork belly with plenty of fat to render down and make it lovely and crispy on the outside. Pork bellies are relatively cheap meat but with very high-fat content, and the flavour is in the fat, and the pork bellies are bursting with flavour.

A BBQ Favourite

But we decided to cook our pork belly slices in the air fryer. It is winter, and there is no BBQ to cook on; the air fryer is more economical than the conventional oven. Oh, and the air fryer is great for making food crispy.

Pick your slices

The variation in the fat level on the pork belly slices is the deciding factor as to how long to cook them for. It is best to try to pick the belly slices that have a similar amount of fat to each other, enabling them to be all cooked for the same amount of time.

Picking pork bellies with less fat will need less time, maybe half the time we used for the pork belly slices shown below.

That’s not a problem; you can interrupt the cooking by removing the air fryer basket to check its appearance. Add more time or take them out.

Cooking

The meat of the pork belly slices doesn’t take very long to cook, and the fat takes time. The fat renders into the meat as it cooks to keep it moist.

Pork belly slices tip: Cook at a lower temperature than in an oven.

The cooking time for the pork belly slices above was 1 hour at 160°C (320°F).

Less fatty

If your pork belly slices have less fat than ours, consider dropping the time by half. You can check how done they are and cook more, but it is impossible to cook less if overcooked.

Pork belly slices tip: They will look very brown but may still need more cooking. Don’t panic if they look dark. You can take one out and cut the end off to check how well it’s done.

Reduce the time if you like your pork belly slices less well done and still quite fatty.

If you like your pork bellies done more, add more time.

The 160°C/320°F works well to render the fat while keeping the meat tender.

AirFryer Pork Belly Slices Cooking Time:

Succulent air-fried pork belly slices

December 5, 2022
Cauliflower Steaks in the Air fryer.

Airfryer cauliflower steaks, how do you make them in an air-fryer? We have cooked cauliflower steaks in the air fryer and have the cooking times and temperatures here for you.

What is a Cauliflower steak?

A cauliflower steak is a thick-cut slice of cauliflower from the centre of the flower, and this is then rubbed lightly with some cooking oil and your favourite seasoning. Then air-fry the cauliflower steak for a cheap, tasty, reasonably low-calorie main.

Oh, it’s vegetarian and vegan and nothing like an actual steak.

Tasty

Although the cauliflower does give some of its flavours to the overall taste, the prominent flavour should come from your seasoning, so pick your best. The cauliflower provides the texture and has a bit of resistance to the bite, but it is still no steak, and it is a cauliflower steak.

How to make cauliflower steaks in the air fryer

Pick the giant cauliflower you can find.

You may be surprised how few steaks you get from one large cauliflower, and we managed to get just two thick-cut steaks from a single large cauli.

The rest of the cauliflower didn’t have enough stalks to hold it together, and the structure fell apart; I will serve the rest as cauliflower florets with tomorrow’s dinner.

Cut out a vee notch from the bottom of the stalk. This part is quite dense and takes much longer to cook than the rest, and it’s easier to remove it.

Cauliflower sliced for steaks in the air fryer.

Rub some oil over the cut cauliflower face. Then sprinkle your favourite seasoning on the face. The oil helps the seasoning stick to the cauliflower as it cooks in the air fryer.

Season your cauliflower steaks before cooking them in the air fryer

On the left image were salt, chilli and garlic, and my homemade chip (fries) seasoning salt was on the right.

Cooking time and temperature for air fryer cauliflower steaks

Cook the cauli for 15 minutes at 180°C (355°F) for a medium well-done cauli. Flip the steaks in the air fryer basket at the shake food warning. This is about 3 minutes before the final 15-timer is up.

Serve with some carbs that you cooked from frozen in the space around the cauliflower steaks.

Airfryer cooking time

December 4, 2022
Cooking Bacon in the air fryer

The air fryer is great for cooking smaller portions of food you would usually grill, and bacon is no exception and works well in the air fryer.

Quick

The advantage of cooking in the air fryer, particularly cooking bacon, is the lower energy costs due to the quicker cooking times. The air fryer heats up more quickly than an electric grill, and being smaller; it needs less energy to stay at that temperature. This can help you use less energy and therefore less cost to cook your bacon.

Small

The disadvantage of the smaller cooking area is that you can’t cook much food in one go. This is compounded with bacon that can only be partially overlapped by the amount it shrinks. You can’t effectively layer the bacon to fit more in; the lower bacon doesn’t cook properly.

For a 6L air fryer, you can get two decent portions of bacon out of it in one go. If cooking bacon for more people, you must do the air frying in multiple stages or dig out the large grill pan and use the oven.

Crispy

The air fryer is excellent at making crispy food. The hot and dry air crispens the food well, and bacon responds well to this cooking technique.

Cooking Time

The cooking times for bacon are a guideline only. There are so many variables to cooking bacon, from the thickness of the bacon to how crispy or uncrispy you want it cooked.

The outstanding feature of the air fryer is that you can quickly check on the done-ness of your bacon by pulling out the basket and looking. You can even flip the bacon over with some tongs if it looks good on one side.

A good start is five minutes for thin bacon done lightly; double that to 10 minutes for more crispy bacon bits. Add more time to make it more crispy. An extra 5 minutes will make a difference.

Cooking Temperature

A good start is 180°C for thin streaky bacon; you can even bring it up to 190°C if you want it more crispy with more fat rendered out.

For back bacon, with its lower fat content, keep to 180°C and check and possibly flip the bacon over at 5 minutes if it’s looking good on one side to bring the total time to 10 minutes at 180°C.

Two different portions

Cooking for two, and each wants a different style of cooking the bacon. A crispy and well done on one plate to only slightly cooked on the other.

Start one portion off first; let that cook well. Then add the next batch next to (not over) the already mostly cooked bacon. Cook the bacon until the just-done bacon is proper. You will have two portions of differing taste bacon finish simultaneously.

Checking

It can take a bit of checking and adding time, time, and temperature to get the bacon precisely as you want. Checking in on the bacon as it cooks and stopping sooner is easier than undoing any burntness or going back in time.

December 1, 2022
Air Fryer Spam Fritters

Well, it’s a cheat for spam fritters in the air fryer rather than the well-loved from-scratch batter version. But it can still be a good second choice when time is limited.

Cheat time

The Iceland frozen food chain has the Hormel frozen ready battered spam fritters. This is the cheat. They have already been made and frozen for convenience, and this cheat cuts out all the work of not just making the batter but also sticking to the spam and not making a mess of the air fryer. Try the frozen variety if you want to save time and still serve spam fritters in the air fryer.

Cooking Time

With the air fryer’s super quick and economical cooking times, the timing differs from that of a conventional oven. While the food packaging plays catch-up with the air fryer revolution, most of the time, temperature cooking instructions are still for a fan oven.

The fan or conventional oven times and temperatures are too hot and too long for an air fryer. We have tested the time and temperature for Iceland’s frozen (from frozen) air fryer settings.

Cooking time: 10 minutes at 180°C (350°F) for the Hormel Spam fritters from frozen.

Crispy

The air fryer is great for making crispy food.

These Spam fritters benefit from a super crispy air fryer-style cooking of the batter. Even frozen, they crisp up nicely on the outside with hot spam in the middle.

Serve

How to serve spam fritters?

The packaging makes a good suggestion. Peas and mashed potato. Not a bad idea. But the air fryer is quick. Much quicker than it takes to boil and mash the potatoes, and it’s only a quick lunch for us.

Our take? Spam fritter sandwiches. No more double carbs than mashed potato, but so much quicker to serve.

Add cheese slices to the spam for the last few minutes of cooking to melt it nicely for that extra calcium we all need.

Pair with Ketchup or Brown sauce; that’s your choice.

Our Verdict

These were very quick to make.
The batter came out extra crunchy.

On a scale of actual, from-scratch spam fritters that get a 10, this frozen variety gets a 7. A good attempt, but the time trade-off shows. But this is not because of the batter, but rather the spam, and it seems to have less flavour and is not as salty as the real stuff from the can.

November 30, 2022
Mini toad in the hole
Can you cook toad in the hole in your air fryer? – Yes, you can, and we have a recipe for making 6 mini toads in the holes in my air fryer to share with you.

What even is a toad in the hole?

Toad in the Hole is a classic dinnertime meal of breakfast sausages in a batter, like a Yorkshire pudding with a sausage.

Mini

A mini toad in the hole is made with chipolata sausages. These are thinner and smaller types of breakfast sausage that cook more quickly than a traditional breakfast sausage, and this is ideal for an air fryer to make a quicker cooking meal.

Mini tins

The mini toad in the holes needs these mini loaf tins from Amazon. Any mini loaf tins you already have will work if they fit in the air fryer. My original loaf tin tray in the traditional fan oven wouldn’t fit in the air fryer, so Amazon mini tins came to the rescue.

Six

Six is the number of mini toads in the hole tins that would fit in my air fryer. If you can take more, you can quickly scale up this recipe. If your air fryer only takes 4 mini loaf tins, then you can keep the quantity of batter and give the toads a bit more hole, adding a minute to the cooking time.

Recipe

6 mini air fryer toad in the holes, serves two people (with veg)
- 6 chipolatas (I used Tesco finest, but any will work)
- 1 and a half teaspoons of vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- A third of a cup of self-raising flour
- Milk to make a dropping batter
- A splash of vinegar (if you like)
- A pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Make the batter
- Break the egg into a jug
- add salt, pepper and a splash of vinegar (or any seasoning you prefer)
- lightly beat the egg with the seasoning
- add 1/3 cup of self-raising flour to the egg and mix
- Add milk gradually to make a thick pouring paste batter
By gradually adding the milk and mixing between each glug of milk, you can quickly gauge a dropping consistency batter that will pour out of the jug but not too thin. Put the batter to one side to rest while you prep the toads.

Put the mini loaf tins in the air fryer basket.

Place a quarter teaspoon of vegetable oil in the bottom of each toad-in-the-hole tin. (The chipolatas I used were not very high in fat, so a little extra helps the toad and hole release from the tin).

Cook the chipolatas in the air fryer for 5 minutes at 160°C (320°F).

No need to preheat the air-fryer. Use the preheating air fryer time to cook the chipolatas over five minutes. Ignore any food-turning notifications.

After 5 minutes timer is up, turn the temperature to 190°C (375°F) and cook for 2 minutes plus the re-heating time.

You should now hear the fat bubbling for the last few minutes

Batter time

With the final 2 minutes up, remove the air fryer basket and pour the batter into each of the 6 mini loaf tins.

Put the basket back into the air fryer and cook for 8 minutes.

Your mini toad in the holes is now ready. Serve with your favourite veg for a balanced meal.

Tips:

Use our unique tool for the job to make getting the mini tins out of the air fryer basket easier. We have a post about it here.

More chipolatas? Double the chipolatas to 2 per tin if you like more sausage. Increase the initial cooking time by two minutes.

More batter? Yes, you can easily double the batter quantity to 2 eggs etc. Then cook the final stage twice as long. Check the colour of the batter part way towards the end of the second half to see if it’s nice and brown.
November 30, 2022
Tool to get pizza out of the air fryer basket

Someone should make a tool to help you quickly get those perfect pizzas out of the air fryer basket.

There is

Well, there is a tool that I find invaluable for lifting things like pizza out of the air fryer basket. It isn’t the tongs. At the same time, the tongs are ideal for lifting breaded chicken portions or crisscross fries. The tongs can’t do pizza; I know I tried and failed.

The tool

The tool is designed for mashing potatoes, and I have now been using it to help lift the pizza from the air fryer basket to make it easy to remove.

The tool has a handle and a 90° bend with a fish slice type of head. This design is ideal as a slip-under and lift tool. It can slip under the base of the cooked pizza and lift it. Then you can turn the basket, and the pizza will effortlessly fall onto the cutting board.

The right way up, no lost topping, all the cheese in place.

This tool makes it easy.

Potato Masher

They are known as potato mashers. The one in my kitchen was previously used as a potato masher, but now it is a pizza lifter.

Not all potato mashers are suitable, and it would help if you had the correct type.

If you don’t already have one of these tools, you can find them on Amazon, or similar on Ali Express that do the same thing, as long as you don’t use it to mash potatoes 😉

Secret

Now you have the secret to getting the cooked pizzas out of the air fryer basket without losing valuable toppings.

Other Uses

I have found the potato masher tool is not ideal for lifting pizza from the air fryer, and I have also used it for lifting the mini loaf tins out of the air fryer basket when making the mini toad-in-the-holes.

November 24, 2022