best foods for the air fryer: what to cook with the Air Fryer

INDEX

1. Introduction
2. What to cook in an air fryer: breaded and battered foods
3. Vegetables: which ones to cook?
4. The best air fryers to buy online

Introduction

Using the air fryer saves time, energy and fat, cooking food in a healthier way than using the traditional deep fryer and the pot itself. Thanks to the high temperatures, the oil, added in small quantities, reaches an ideal degree of heat for frying food, acting as a uniform heat carrier. In addition to keeping food crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside in just a few minutes, cooking with this type of ventilated oven is useful in keeping food properties intact and saving energy, which translates into lower costs in the bill. 

The traditional fryer is used almost exclusively for frying a few foods such as chips, cutlets , and breaded delicacies, pancakes and fried pasta typical of some regions ( panzerotti , fried dumplings , etc.), while with the air fryer you can make excellent fries such as chips, croquettes, cutlets, but also cook vegetables , shellfish , chicken , and fish , and even desserts and quiches .

What to cook in an air fryer: breaded and battered foods

• Breaded foods: cutlets,fish sticks,cordon bleu
• Pre fried foods
• Pre fried chips
• Vegetables such as zucchini, peppers,carrots,fennel,cauliflower,broccoli
• Fish: also frozen, whole or in slices, breaded or natural, such as salmon,tuna,cod,hake, sea bream,sea bass , etc.
• Mixedfried squid and prawns ,
• Chicken, sliced, in morsels or even in parts such as thighs, wings and thighs
• Savory and sweet cakes made withpuff pastryor shortcrust pastry
• Roasted meat, such as slices, fillets or meatballs
• Beefand chicken steaks
• Sweetsand cakes (160 ° to 180 ° temperature) such as plum cakes, yoghurt cakes , muffins
• Hard- boiled eggs: set a temperature of 130 ° for 12 minutes;
• Omelettes(placing parchment paper on the basket before pouring the beaten eggs , with or without vegetables)
• Wet battered foods
• Meatballs of legumes( chickpeas,beans,peas ) such as falafel
• Carnival  chatter
• Pumpkin
• Confit tomatoes
• Timbale ofvegetables au gratin
• EggplantParmigiana

Do not use wet breaded or battered foods: foods of this type should first be frozen and then placed in the air fryer because they use hot air instead of oil, the wet batter does not solidify so quickly, and you would get cutlets, nuggets and mushy, chewy vegetables. Although baked goods can be safely cooked in an air fryer, moist and battered foods cannot be fried in this type of convection oven.

Chips, cutlets, fish sticks etc will have the same crunchy texture as those fried in a traditional deep fryer, but will be healthier because the use of oil is very minimal.

The times are reduced but also the fats . If you use a liter of oil for frying to cook in a traditional deep fryer, in this case a tablespoon of oil is added to the basket of the air fryer for chips, cutlets and chicken wings, which can also be cooked together. The hot air accumulated in the cooking chamber, which circulates quickly, guarantees homogeneous cooking. The oils to be used with the air fryer are those vegetable oils suitable for high temperatures, i.e. with a high smoke point, so that they do not release dangerous substances.

Vegetables: which ones to cook?

Vegetables deserve a separate discussion. Not all, in fact, are suitable for cooking in an air fryer. Green leafy vegetables , for example, are very delicate and prone to burns. Leafy vegetables should definitely not be cooked in the air fryer. So green light for zucchini, peppers, eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, fennel etc. but not for kale,cabbage,spinach,kale , etc. because they are too tender and tend to burn.

Air fryer: what it is and what are the advantages

The air fryer is nothing more than a small ventilated oven , in which to prepare crunchy lunches and dinners in a few minutes and using a much lower quantity of fat than traditional fried food. Among the pros of its use there are certainly that of consuming less electricity, and therefore lightening the bills and saving on the family budget, but also other advantages, including:

• Fried with less fat, lighterand more digestible
• Consume fried occasionally because they are healthier
• The oil does not risk becoming toxic
• More hygiene and no bad smells
• Quick and easy cleaning
• Safe cooking
• Savings in the amount of oil used
• Cooking in less time
• More food to prepare than a traditional deep fryer

Advice

• Grease the basket: Brushing the air fryer basket with oil allows the food not to stick in cooking.
• Do not overfill the basket: the capacity of the air fryer allows you to cook portions for 2-4 people.
• Grease the slices of meat or fish fillets before placing them in the basket, covered with baking paper.

The best air fryers to buy online

Let’s find out which are the best air fryer models on the market . On the Amazon website we can choose fryers for every budget: from the cheapest to the professional ones, for small or large quantities of food to be fried. We have selected these for you!

COSORI XXL Air Fryer

Cosori Air Fryer allows you to cook in a healthier way, reducing  FATby 85% but maintaining the same   CRUNCHY and tender  taste of fried food. It has 11 cooking programs