What is air frying?

Air Frying is gaining so much popularity. But there’s still a lot of confusion as to how it differs from pressure cookers, deep fat frier and conventional oven cooking.

The number 1 point you should know about air fryers is that if you can cook a recipe in a regular conventional oven or in a deep fat fryer, then you can cook it in an air fryer.

Air fryers generate high heat connected to a fan which circulates the hot air to help the food cook evenly and crispy and caramelise proteins to give them delicious flavours.

In the overhand, Pressure cooker will cook a cheaper cut of meat more rapidly and are not great to create crispy or caramelisation on food. Everyone knows about deep fat fryer and conventional oven. Some air fryers such as the Ninja foodie is a multi-cooker including air fryer, pressure cooker and slow cooker all in. one!

A note to mention Acti-fryers which are similar to Air fryer but include a moving part in the centre. Those machines are mostly only used to replace a deep fat fryer with only small food to be cooked in it!

Do air frying foods come out crispy?

Most food also comes out like it’s perfectly roasted in a convection oven with wonderful roasted flavours and textures. When breaded and sprayed with oil, food becomes crunchy and very similar to what you would cook in a deep fryer.

For fatty protein like chicken wings or pork belly, they will cook amazingly crisp without any oil. The benefit to all this is that you can still get crispy crunch without using a ton of oil.

In order for breaded foods to have extra crunch, just bread like you normally would. Then spray with oil and the results are fantastic. Sure, it’s not like deep-fried food but it sure is very close and you don’t get all that oil fat.

For even lower carb options, you can bread with almond flour, almond meal or coconut flour.

Can you cook healthy food in the air fryer?

Air Fryers can help you eat fresh and healthy! Air Frying isn’t just about cooking frozen fries, chicken nuggets or convenience foods. The hot circulating heat crisps and roasts food wonderfully without the need for a lot of oil. So overall, yes air fried food can be healthier. Portion control is another important factor and if you eat more than the recommended serving, you’ve just blown the “healthy” out of air frying.

Easy tips for air frying:

  1. Don’t overcrowd the baskets with food.
  2. Cook in batches if you need to (2 small-medium batches cook better than 1 large batch).
  3. Don’t forget to shake or give a gentle toss of the food while cooking
  4. Preheat the air fryer before placing the food
  5. If using parchment paper use perforated ones and place only when you add the food to avoid the parchment going up in flames when the air fryer is preheating!

Single 7 Day Course

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All recipes relating to the course