Air Fryer recipes

It’s a few hours before the big game, but you still don’t know what to do for snacks? Maybe you didn’t make it to the store, or maybe you just got too busy to think about it. Whatever the reason, don’t worry, all is not lost. I’ve got a few easy ideas using items you probably have on hand in your kitchen.

Pigs in a blanket

1 package of hot dogs or cooked sausage

1 roll of Crescents (Pillsbury)

Ketchup (optional)

Mustard (optional)

Pre-heat oven according to Crescent roll package. Open and unroll Crescent rolls onto a clean working surface. Separate them according to the perforations. Spread a light amount of ketchup and mustard (if using) only on the wide end of each roll. Place one sausage or hot dog at the wide end of each roll and roll them up.

Place them on a lined or sprayed baking sheet a few inches apart.

Bake according to package directions. Let cool for 5 minutes and then cut them to size. Serve with more ketchup and mustard, melted cheese, BBQ sauce, or hot sauce.

Cheese dip

1 Eight ounce box of Velveeta

½ cup of Rotel tomatoes drained or ½ cup of salsa excess liquid drained

½ cup of cooked sausage or left-over cooked meat chopped fine (optional).

1 scallion, sliced thin keeping white and green parts separate (optional)

Place all ingredients, except the green parts of the scallions, in a bowl and microwave 30 seconds at a time, stirring after every 30 seconds, until Velveeta is completely melted. Stir thoroughly and sprinkle the top with scallion greens. Serve immediately. If it gets too cool and starts to be hard to dip, microwave for 30 seconds, and stir.

Variation: Omit Salsa/Rotel and meat and stir in a can of chili instead.

Air Fryer Taquitos

1 ½ – 2 cups of left-over cooked meat and/or cooked veggies

1 cup of shredded Cheddar, Monterey, Gouda, Colby or Taco blend cheese

4-8 inch flour or corn tortillas as needed

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 tsp ground garlic

Jarred sliced hot peppers (optional)

Mix meat and/or veggies with cumin, chili powder, and garlic. Mix in hot peppers if using. If the mixture is too dry, add 1 Tablespoon of water at a time. It should be moist but not dripping. Put cheese on one end of a tortilla, place meat/veggie mixture on top of the cheese, place a little more cheese on top and roll up. Depending on the size of your tortilla, you should have about 3 Tablespoons of filling (including the cheese) in the tortilla, don’t overfill. You should be able to roll it easily. Place seam side down in a single layer in the air fryer basket. Repeat until all the filling is used. Spray Taquitos with oil spray and air fry on 380 for 6-8 minutes until light brown and crisp. Cool for 2-3 minutes before biting in; they will be very hot inside. You can serve salsa, sour cream, guacamole on the side for dipping.

Buffalo Cauliflower or Brussel Sprouts

2 cups of Cauliflower florets (can be frozen)

2 cups of cleaned, trimmed, and cut in half Brussel sprouts

Frank’s Original Hot Sauce or Buffalo Sauce

Ranch or Bleu cheese Dressing

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Place Cauliflower or Brussel sprouts in a Microwave safe bowl with a lid and add ¼ cup of water (if using frozen, don’t add any water), cover and microwave for 3-4 minutes or until a fork offers only slight resistance.

Transfer to a strainer and drain off any liquid.

In a large bowl, Toss Cauliflower or Brussel sprouts in Frank’s until well coated. Transfer to a lined and sprayed sheet pan. Bake for about 15-20 minutes, until they are brown. Check after 10 minutes.

Serve with Ranch or Bleu cheese dressing for dipping.

I was excited when my Family Size air fryer arrived. My dreams of fried food at home without a greasy mess were about to come true. I’ve been a Chef for many years and have enjoyed more than my share of deep-fried love, so why not buy this heaven sent gift to mankind and start frying guilt free at home too! The reviews said so, people talk about how great it is, how healthy it is, just as good as deep-fried food, the best thing since sliced bread, right?! This was totally going to be worth the counter space!

Well, not so much.

I know, I know, there are some people who think deep-fried food is the devil’s food and absolutely love their air fryer for offering them what they feel is an alternative to the evils of deep-frying. To them, I say good for you! I’m happy that you have found something that fills the fried food void in your soul and I’m sure these air fried foods will find their well deserved place next to your Tofu Turkey and Cauliflower mashed “potatoes”. All kidding aside though, and no offense intended, the air fryer is not actually a fryer any more than mashed Cauliflower can be considered mashed potatoes. The food it creates is not fried food, but something entirely different. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it isn’t, much like anything we cook, but it can never be classified as fried food. So let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

What is an air fryer? It is essentially a small convection oven on steroids that heats up and cools down very quickly. What is a convection oven? It is an oven with a fan inside that circulates air around the food while it is cooking. Convection ovens often cook faster than a conventional oven and typically brown food better by drying the outer layer quickly.

The air fryer is small, even though I got one of the biggest out there. Most foods can’t be stacked, so it’s a single layer not touching kind of thing. This means that even though it might say 4 quarts, it really only fits one layer in the surface area available on the bottom of the fry basket. The Exceptions are fries and onion rings that you can pile and have to shake a lot to mix while cooking.

Which brings us to French Fries, the one thing my husband was truly excited about, we were not impressed. They went from soggy to the consistency of potato chips in a flash. Perhaps I need to purchase the type of fries that you bake in the oven, but doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of fried?

Let’s talk about the uniform browning you achieve in just a few short minutes in a deep fryer. This is not a reality for the air fryer. You really must spray your food with oil if you want it to brown. Things like potstickers or dumplings will be the consistency of baked parchment paper if you don’t. Things such as breaded zucchini, coconut shrimp, or chicken will not brown if they are not completely coated in oil. If any portion of these items is missed by the oil spray and remains dry, you’re going to end up with patches of dried out crispy stuff that isn’t really browned. Dumpling type foods and homemade breaded foods were still not worth the time after multiple attempts, the desired texture and browning could not be achieved in the air fryer.

That being said, and the fact that deep-frying is considered a dry cooking method, (I won’t get into the techno reasons now), it’s hard for me to believe that PROPERLY deep-fried food really contains a lot less, or any less, fat than food cooked in the air fryer. Unless of course, you prefer food that is not browned, dry, and papery, and therefore you choose not to spray it completely with oil before air frying.

The exception would be foods that already have fatty exteriors, such as chicken with the skin on or bacon. These items do not need to be sprayed and will crisp up nicely in the air fryer. If you are feeding more than one person though, it will take a long time because you will need to do multiple batches. Which brings us to the next item.

The food I’ve made in the air fryer doesn’t take less time to cook than it would in my oven. The advantage of the air fryer is that you don’t have to pre-heat your oven or heat up your house. The air fryer heats up quickly and doesn’t emit a lot of heat to the outside. So using the air fryer is a good alternative on a hot day when you don’t want to run the oven.

So what else does it do well?

It does a good job of reheating food that has already been fried or food you want to keep crisp or make crispy.

It crisps and reheats fresh bread as if it were made for that purpose. You will likely need to cut your bread to fit in the basket. A couple of minutes in the air fryer and the bread is like fresh baked again. This is its best quality, in my opinion. I now refer to my air fryer as “the bread warmer”.

It is a lot less messy and doesn’t blow oil mist around your kitchen as a deep fryer does.

You don’t have to dispose of cooking oil or deal with straining and storing oil.

It is quiet, heats up and cools down quickly, and doesn’t radiate heat to the rest of your kitchen.

It cleans up fairly easily, although when food gets stuck to the holes in the basket, it requires a little soaking. I recommend buying parchment paper basket liners to make clean up easier.

Homemade Taquitos, Chicken Wings for one, and reheating bread or pizza, are primarily what I do in the air fryer these days.

Bottom line? The air fryer does not cook items faster or better than a deep fryer. The fryer basket surface area is too small to make it practical for family use. The same or better results can be achieved by using your oven. In my opinion, the air fryer is not worth the money or the counter space.

Tested air fryer recipes.

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Air Fryers, are they worth your counter space?