TIME TO JUST WING IT
Crispy-skin chicken, shrimp and more cook up joyfully in oil-free fryer
Crispy-skin chicken, shrimp and more cook joyfully in oil-free fryer that’s ideal for trying new things.
If I applied Marie Kondo’s simple yet polarizing question to my kitchen appliances, only my air fryer would make the cut. It has undeniably sparked a particular kind of pandemic joy: the pleasures of safe experimentation, mental activity and the illusion of control.
I had resisted buying an air fryer precisely because too many friends had gushed about them with obnoxious enthusiasm.
I groused — as author and Food Network personality Alton Brown did on Twitter in early October — that these miniature convection ovens aren’t fryers at all. Instead, they surround food in an El Niño of hot air, cooking with little or no oil. Baking and roasting, yes; frying, no. Plus, chances were high that any new countertop appliance would soon join my junk-cabinet graveyard of George Foreman grills, bullet juicers, electric griddles and Tupperware.
But then a friend mentioned the magic words: “egg rolls.” The last time I’d bitten into one that snapped, crackled and popped, I was dining at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in the Before Times. I had tired of sad, soggy takeout egg rolls that needed broiler time.
Armed with my air fryer and anticipation, I fired up chicken wings, roasted carrots and broccoli, citrus salmon and moist banana bread. The infamous mushiness of a whole Red Delicious apple became a delightful no-added-sugar applesauce.
Fred van der Weij, the 58-year-old “father of the air fryer” as we know it, understands that compulsion to try new things as both an entrepreneur and eater. A product designer and engineer based in the Netherlands, he had heard of Chinesemade, smaller convection ovens. But they couldn’t quite produce what he craved: the perfect fries with little hassle (it’s not just
the Belgians and their frites).
Those appliances “couldn’t make french fries of very good quality. They were dry and not very crispy at all. They needed a long time for preparation. French fries were the first thing we tried, because they’re very sensitive to heating: too much, too long, too short,” he said.
On a recent Zoom call, van der Weij walked me through his workshop and pointed out early prototypes. The first attempt was rustic, nothing more than a box of pale wood with a metal cooking bowl that he handcrafted himself around 2006. He pitched a short, squat crimson machine using the air-cooking method he had patented to the multinational electronics maker Philips. And then finally, a sleeker black model produced by Philips’ global design team and introduced at a consumer electronics fair in Berlin in 2010. Three years later, Philips began selling its air fryer in the United States. Estimates vary, but the worldwide air fryer business market in 2018 might have been worth as much as $900 million.
The air fryer is a modest investment and scant risk (no oil splatters!), the margins for error typically generous. I can pop out the basket and lay eyes on my fries, see if they’re browning or burning. I don’t worry about interrupted cooking and letting the heat out of my full-size oven. If I make a mistake, I reload and start over. Yes, you can do that with any oven, but not in such quick-quick time.
Air frying is accessible enough that Tanya Harris of Raleigh, N.C., a self-confessed former non-cook, mother of two and an expublic defender, has become a professional food blogger and recipe developer. About half the recipes on her website, My Forking Life, were designed for an air fryer.
Now she makes spatchcocked chicken, snackable roasted chickpeas and applesauce muffins (yes, you can bake!) in her air fryers. She tests recipes on the trio of popular models that her readers are likely to have, but she has eight air fryers and won’t rule out buying more.
Among her commonsense tips: Don’t go too small when buying an air fryer. Harris recommends 5-quart machines for families and adjusting serving sizes as needed (as a singleton, I opted for a smaller one). She avoids batters — most air fryers can’t handle wet ingredients dropped directly in the cooking chamber — and is realistic about what an air fryer can do.
“I’m never going to do hush puppies in the air fryer,” she added. My personal no-go dish is fried chicken.
But when Harris does try something battered, she breaks out cupcake foils, a f lexible silicone muffin pan, and parchment paper to lie under pizza dough. Small pans, as sometimes recommended, just don’t do the trick.
While many manufacturers encourage shaking the basket contents for even cooking, Harris advises judiciousness when cooking breaded items. Shake too hard, too much or too early, and there goes the breading. Sometimes, she allows cooking to go undisturbed for the first half of the required time. But at the halfway mark, she’ll hit pause and then spray the kids’ chicken tenders with a light coating of oil for optimal crispiness, popping the basket back in for the remaining minutes. And for people trying to convert a standard oven recipe, she urges lowering the conventional oven temperature by at least 10 to 15 percent because the food in an air fryer is ideally getting more direct heat from every angle. (Like any appliance, an air fryer can run hot or cold. Harris uses a thermometer with hers, especially when cooking meat.)