The air-frying lessons I learnt the hard way
This appliance has revolutionised the way I cook – but learning how to best use it was a long process, littered with fails. Here are all the mistakes I’ve made, so you don’t have to. By Annabel Rackham While I’m not usually one to get caught up in cookery fads, I have fallen victim to buying ‘miracle’ appliances over the years – ones I’ve used once or twice and then subsequently left to gather dust at the back of a cupboard (my long-neglected bread maker and juicer spring to mind). The story couldn’t be more different for my air fryer, though. It just has so much going for it: air frying tends to be quicker than using an oven (partly because there’s no need to preheat), they’re super efficient and frequently use less energy. What originally led me to buy one of these tiny ovens was a recipe for cornflake-coated chicken I saw on TikTok, but I was soon experimenting with other foods like eggs. (OK, poaching was a no-go but, surprisingly, you can soft or hard boil an egg in an air fryer.) Now I’m using mine for everything from baking cakes to honey-roasting vegetables. But that doesn’t mean everything I’ve cooked in air fryers has been a great success. Here are the mistakes I’ve made along the way and some helpful advice from the experts so you don’t recreate my disasters. Overfilling The compact size of my air fryer is great for my small kitchen, but it did lead to some early issues. One of the first was when I made garlic bread, which came out half raw. This is something recipe developer and air frying expert Bianca Nice is cautious of. “For a good even bake, you shouldn’t overfill your air fryer. Food won’t cook properly and be soggy instead of crisp – this is especially important to remember for things like chips or roast potatoes.” Getting that consistent cook throughout is something I also struggled with when making granola. It took a lot of experimenting before I nailed that crunchy texture. Now, I bake it at a lower temperature and make sure I give the basket a few shakes along the way. This stops the top from burning and ensures the oats in the middle and bottom of the basket don’t stay soft. Cooking at too hot a temperature You’d think that cooking at 180C would give the same result whether you’re using an air fryer or oven, but I soon began to realise there was a small but important difference. My early attempts at fish and chicken were dry and overcooked. Chef Poppy O’Toole recently published an air fryer recipe book, and told me that getting the right temperature was something she initially struggled with too. “One air fryer’s heat might be more ferocious than another’s. [When writing the book] I had two different air fryers to use. Sometimes, one of the recipes would work perfectly in one and then we’d have to tweak it for the other, so it involved a bit of trial and error. “I found it useful to start off with frozen products, like chips,” she says. “Put them in and keep an eye – if they cook in five minutes, you know you’ve got a very strong air fryer. Then you can start working out how best to cook other dishes. Having used Poppy’s frozen chip test to gauge the power of my air fryer, I always add marinades to meat now too (favourites include teriyaki salmon, piri-piri chicken and miso-glazed fish) and wrap the lot in foil. This helps keep the meat moist as well as add flavour. Over relying on the timer A lot of air fryers come with a timer which turns the power off at the end of the cooking time. I find this really useful – no longer do you get distracted and then find your entire dinner is burnt to a crisp. Well, that’s the idea, anyway. The thing is, knowing that I don’t have to keep an eye on the time often leads me to go and do something else while my food cooks, meaning I forget to check on it or shake the basket, resulting in over-browned, burnt bits. Checking on your food regularly is important, says Nice. “Be aware that things can burn on the top, like cakes. If you’re cooking something for a long time, you’ll need to keep an eye on it and perhaps cover it with foil to stop it from browning too much on the outside.” Using it like a frying pan In the early days of experimenting with my air fryer, I thought I’d be able to use it in a similar way to a frying pan or deep-fat fryer. I tried to cook steak in there, but found it difficult to gauge when it was done to my liking. Nice says that steak is something you should leave for your griddle pan. “Air fryers are great for sausages, chicken and kebabs, however they’re not so great for steak, or any other cut of meat that needs you to control the cooking process in fine detail – especially if you want it rare or medium.” Then there was the viral Pancake Day trend on TikTok, where people were putting layers of batter between baking parchment in the air fryer to make pancakes – it never worked and I can vividly remember the mess it made. O’Toole tried similar cooking techniques but quickly found her air fryer just couldn’t give the same results as a good old frying pan. “I was going to do a wet batter recipe in my book, something like fish and chips, but it just wasn’t giving me the desired effect because the batter was falling off the protein before it cooked. It didn’t matter whether it was fish or chicken nuggets. The batter just wouldn’t stay together. Wet batter becomes far more messy than it’s worth. “So, we went with breadcrumbs instead, which is just as delicious and definitely does work.” Cooking big meals If you’re entertaining lots of people or just cooking a meal with lots of elements, sometimes the oven is your best bet. With an oven, you can prep everything and just put it in at different stages, so everything is ready at the same time – whereas even with a large or double basket air fryer, that’s not always possible. Cooking smaller batches of food individually in your air fryer can take a long time, be more of a logistical faff and end up being less economical than using the oven for a shorter period. Before you fire up your old-school cooker though, Nice says you can maximise your air fryer space by finding trays and dishes that make the most out of the room inside. “You can use any vessel you would use in an oven to cook in an air fryer. The shape and size can be a bit tricky. I find using a cake tin works really well for most cooking – just make sure it’s not a loose base one.” O’Toole adds: “If you have an air fryer which has a basket drawer, to get around the lack of space I got a little oven-proof glass tray and then made little foil walls to add height. This was great for desserts, because then I could put muffin cases into it.” Being nervous about baking When I eventually got around to experimenting with pastry, I found it was surprisingly great in the air fryer. These days, my homemade sausage rolls are always beautifully crisp and golden. O’Toole was also surprised by how well some of her recipes worked. “I was gobsmacked by the desserts I could make. I was initially thinking, for instance, that muffins would be far too delicate to cook in an air fryer. But honestly, they were so amazing – we didn’t really have to test too much because they just kept working. “For students, people who are just getting into cooking or those who don’t have a lot of space, air fryers make baking possible. People love baking, but we also end up getting stressed by it. Air fryers simplify everything ⁠–⁠ for instance, you don’t have to panic about losing heat when you open it to check on your bake, like you do with an oven.” Originally published October 2023