Cooking with an Air Fryer: The Top 3 Things to Avoid

Cooking with an air fryer is a fun and easy way to provide your family with delicious meals. Air fryer cooking allows you to make crispy entrees and side dishes without having to add much oil at all. So how does an air fryer work? Simply put, air is heated to high temperatures and circulated up through and around your food to make it crispy on the outside and cooked on the inside. When you understand everything about air fryers and how they work, you can be better prepared for your cooking.

Sometimes, making food in your air fryer can be more difficult than it should be. You may be making a few mistakes that you might not even realize when cooking food in your fryer. Below, we have put together a list of the top three things to avoid when using your air fryer. Check out this list and see if there are some changes you can make when it comes to hot air frying and more.

Do Not Overload Your Air Fryer

Many potential air fryer users ask the same question: are air fryers any good? Your air fryer will be the perfect addition to your kitchen when you remember not to overload the cooking basket with food.

Each air fryer holds a different capacity of food, so check your instruction manual to find out how large your fryer is. The larger the fryer, the bigger the cooking basket. Smaller cooking baskets may only hold enough food for one or two servings, depending on what you cook.

Remember not to pile ingredients high in your cooking basket, but to spread them out evenly on the bottom of the basket instead. If you must stack ingredients, shake your cooking basket a couple of times while your food is frying.

Do Not Overheat Your Food

Follow the directions in every recipe you use to be sure your food is not overheated. Set the air fryer to the appropriate temperature and let it cook for the right amount of time. Do not assume that you need to add time to your food to make it crispier.

However, if you find that your food is frequently coming out undercooked for your tastes, you can add two minutes at a time to the cooking time until you find the perfect balance. Work in small increments like this in order to avoid burning your food. Burned food never tastes good!

Always use the suggested temperatures for cooking in your air fryer. Never turn it higher than required by your recipes. This can help you avoid unsafe cooking situations as well as burned food.

Do Not Use Deep-Fat Fryer Or Microwave Ingredients

You may find yourself wondering, “What can I cook in an airfryer?” It is important to remember not to cook foods that are meant for microwaving or preparing in a deep-fat fryer.

If you stick to ingredients that are intended for use in the oven, you will have much better results with your air fryer. Your air fryer can bake and fry food just as well as your oven can, but if you use something meant for deep-fat frying in a ton of oil, it will never be as crispy as expected.

Choose fresh ingredients you could prepare in a traditional oven for best results. For example, when making fries, cut the potatoes yourself instead of buying a bag of frozen potatoes for deep frying.

Conclusion

By now, you should know all about the top three problems to avoid when using your air fryer. You can move on from here and find out what is the best air fryer for your needs, or even start looking for delicious recipes to help you get to know your new appliance even better.

The next time you prepare food in your air fryer, remember not to overload the cooking basket. Keep in mind that the temperature of your food should never be increased more than a couple of minutes at a time, and remember to only use ingredients you could prepare in a traditional oven.

By following these three tips, you will be cooking delicious air fried foods in no time at all. You and your whole family can enjoy your air fryer even more when you remember these top three pitfalls to avoid the next time you cook in your favorite appliance.