I just bought a Ninja Foodi Dual Heat Air Fry Oven to replace my toaster oven. I cooked some packaged crab cakes and chicken tenders last night and they came out well. Especially the crab cakes which were nice and crispy on the outside. Currently, I'm cooking a bison chuck roast and mushrooms in a dutch oven and will use the air fryer for brussels and fingerling potatoes.
For those of you who do air fry do you have any tips, tricks, recipes you recommend?
I'm definitely looking forward to running some wings through it. Anything unusual you've used it for? Also, have you played with the griddle function? That seems to have potential.
Currently own:
Weber 22 and 26 Kettle.
Regular gasser with rotisserie.
Custom built horizontal stick burner.
Custom built duel fuel "whole hog" cooker.
​​​Many other tools of the trade.
We love our air fryer. We have two now; inside and outdoor kitchen. Best thing we learned was to treat it like a convection oven and Not a deep fryer. Avoid heavy-breaded items like mushrooms, other veggies. Home made lightly coated is fine but frozen vegetables tend to over cook the outside and turn the veggies into a pasty mush. We cook numerous foods in ours. Better half cooks a lot of chuck steaks in them for a fast lunch. Just have to play with the items you like to fry the most. It has become another ' won't due without one' item for us.
Smokin-It 3D
Weber Kettle with an SNS
Masterbuilt kettle that I call the $30 wonder grill
Bullet by Bull Grills gasser
Anova WiFi sous vide machine
Thermoworks Thermapen and Chef Alarm
My son is the air fryer of the house. He puts everything in there! Even sandwiches. I’ll ask him if he’s done anything special. It may just be the breaded/fried stuff that he makes himself for lunches and dinner when I don’t cook.
We’ve had an air fryer for a few years and love it. It’s great for appetizer stuff…wings, nuggets, even hotdogs. We do bacon wrapped Jalapeño poppers and they come out great.
I do not air fry. Two of my 3 kids have air fryers though and seem to swear by them. For me, most of them seem too limited in capacity, which is one reason I tend to deep fry in my dutch oven(s) rather than my T-fal deep fryer - capacity. We do however have an expensive microwave / convection oven / hood combo, and knowing that air fryers are tiny convection ovens, I tried some potato wedges in that a while back in convection mode, but they didn't really crisp up the way I hoped.
I looked hard at that same Ninja oven, until I realized my upper cabinets are about a 1/2 inch too low for the Ninja oven/air fryer to flip up and against the backsplash for space savings... Without being able to do that, the wife would want me to put it away in a closet or pantry when not in use, and its just too big and bulky for that.
You were the one that brought that air fryer to my attention. The flip feature sold me.
I'm about to head down to the cabin where I can finally play with my new induction/convection/airfry range. That oven has a much greater capacity. I will need to order an air fry basket though.
DrJimmy2112 Really the cod and asparagus were the results of the air fry function, the salmon was the result of the broil function, and the pizza was the result of the sear crisp function. Sear crisp is also what produced that entire pork tenderloin meal below.
There are many people who love and swear by their air fryers
The previous comments are correct: treat it like a compact convection oven and you'll be fine. It is NOT a fryer.
Alton Brown had two amusing air fryer related segments on his Quarantine Quitchen youtube series last year.:
Part one showed how unhappy and useless he found it to be. Lots of need to adjust dials and preheat and other things that might not be immediately obvious.
Part two was after he read the viewer comments and the manual: he seemed pleased with the chicken wing results after that and retracted his comments from the week before. It was quite amusing
our issue with the air fryer and an instant pot is the amount of space they take up. We would not want to keep something that big on a counter, and don't have a place to put them away easily.
It takes some getting used to but this particular air fryer is pretty intuitive. You are right, I simply view it as an oven. The only real trick is figuring out which mode to use for what and then getting a feel for the time whatever you're cooking will need. With that salmon, I just stuck a thermometer in the fish which made it easy. I bought this specific model (Ninja Model # SP301) because it flips up and thus does not take up much space. My instant pot found a home on the washing machine.
We received the Ninja air fryer/oven for Christmas. Yours may be a step up from ours though. It looks a little different on the inside from the photos. And a griddle function? Don’t have that. Not mentioned in the manual anyway. Just beginning to explore its uses but like it so far. Wings are next up as soon as they thaw. Love the flip function. Essential with our available counter space.
I have made wings in the air fryer multiple times. I have found if you first cook them at 340 degrees for 15 minutes or so it renders out some of the unnecessary fat. I will then drain the fat out of the bin and finish the wings off at 400 for 3 to 5 minutes. The skins get crispy this way and your kitchen doesn’t fill up with the smell of burnt chicken fat.
I have also deemed it the ultimate tator tot cooking vessel.
For brunch I like making Potatoes O’Brien in it. Dice up some red potatoes, green pepper and onion, toss them in some vegetable oil and cook until done.
Do you... air fry?
;not really familiar with that, might be a geographical thang...
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