Best Foods for the Air Fryer: What to Cook in the Air Fryer

Introduction

Using the air fryer saves time, energy and fat, cooking food in a healthier way than the traditional 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 convection oven is useful for keeping the properties of the food intact and saving energy, which translates into lower bills. 

The traditional fryer is used almost exclusively for frying a few foods such as chips, cutlets , and breaded delicacies, pancakes and fried dough 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 sweets and savory pies .

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

• Breaded foods: cutlets, fish sticks , cordon bleu, etc
• Pre fried foods
• Pre fries
• Vegetables such as courgettes , 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.
• Mixed fried  squid and prawns ,
• Chicken , sliced, in chunks or even in parts such as thighs, wings and thighs
• Savory and sweet pies made with puff pastry or shortcrust pastry
• Roasted meat , such as slices, fillets or meatballs
• Beef and chicken steaks
• Sweets and cakes (160° to 180° temperature) such as plum cakes, yogurt cakes , muffins
• Boiled eggs : set a temperature of 130° for 12 minutes;
• Omelettes (placing baking paper on the basket before pouring the beaten eggs , with or without vegetables)
• Battered wet foods
• Legume balls ( chickpeas , beans , peas ) like falafel
• Carnival  talk
• Pumpkin
• Confit tomatoes
• Timbale of grated vegetables
• Eggplant Parmesan

Do not use moist breaded or battered foods: foods of this type should be frozen first and then placed in the air fryer because they use hot air rather than oil, wet batter does not solidify as quickly, and you will get cutlets, nuggets and mushy, chewy vegetables. Although baked goods can be cooked safely in an air fryer, moist and battered foods cannot be fried in this type of fan oven, because that’s what they are.

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

Time is reduced but so are fats . If a liter of oil is used for frying in a traditional fryer, in this case a maximum of one 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 ensures 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. In fact, not all of them are suitable for cooking in an air fryer. Green leafy vegetables, for example, are very delicate and prone to burns . Leafy greens should never be cooked in an air fryer. So green light for zucchini, peppers, aubergines, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, fennel etc but not curly kale , verza , spinach , black cabbage etc because they are too tender and tend to burn.

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 pocket: from the cheapest to the professional ones, for small or large quantities of food to fry. We have selected these for you!