Drew Tries Stuff: Quarantine Air Frying
For folks newer to the blog (let me have my fantasies), I’m a big fan of food. Being a formerly extra-hefty fellow is my resume for eating it, and early on I learned to whip up my own when occasion demanded. I have dabbled in many dishes, from the complex to the simple, to the simple that I’ve made complex by tinkering. But today, we aren’t going into any of that complicated stuff. Today’s blog is about utilizing a newly popular tool in handy ways that will be easily accessible to nearly everyone.
First off, in case anyone is unfamiliar, an air fryer is a powerful convection oven that rapidly circulates air and simulated a frying effect on food without the need for pans or grease. The one I used for this blog’s testing purposes was the Ninja Air Fryer. This isn’t sponsored, and very little will be said about the equipment itself, but different models have different features so I wanted to be transparent.
Now then, with allll that preamble out of the way, what is this Drew Tries Stuff really about? Is it just air fryer recipes, because those are all over the internet. Fear not, patient reader, all is about to be revealed. For while those recipes are indeed easy, they are also still recipes, and we’re going even simpler than that. You see, amidst it’s cooking functions, the air fryer has another magic, one not nearly as well-toted in the marketing.
Air fryers heat frozen food like a beast. I don’t just mean it does it faster than a traditional oven, but yes that’s true, or it avoids the drying out issue of microwaves, again also true. Given that so many of us are locked down, grabbing what’s available when shopping and perhaps working through our frozen foods, that aspect seemed especially worth exploring. What’s really amazing is that it makes… genuinely better versions of some of these, reaching levels of quality not reachable through other methods. What sorts of items might I be talking about? Well…
Bagel Bites/Bagels
A bagel bite is kind of like miniature disappointment paired with a peppy theme song. You always want them to taste better than they will, even knowing that the sauce will be thin and the bread dried out. Don’t get me wrong, I can still take down a tray under the right circumstances, but they fail to live up to their own hype. Now an air fryer doesn’t change that entirely, however it does deliver on bar none, the best bagel bite experience I’ve ever had.
It took a few samples for me to put my finger on it, and what joyful research that was. I think what separates this version is oddly simple: it’s the first time they actually tasted like bagels. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, when paired with the nicely heated toppings, it was pretty dang enjoyable.
Inspired by this, I extended the testing to actual bagels, and was delighted to find the results transferred over. They lack a bit of the usual toasted color, yet the overall flavor is good enough to make it a non-issue. I should note that I was using the kind of bagels stored in a refrigerator, mostly because we’re in a pandemic and that’s what I could find.
Bagel Bites: Air Fry on 390 for roughly 6 minutes, checking regularly after the 4 minute mark for desired doneness.
Frozen Chicken
I’m using a big sweeping category here, because I tested quite a few various chicken products over the course of this entry. Nuggets, patties, strips, you name it. I almost just titled this one “fried proteins” but there’s bound to be a ton I’ve yet to investigate. As for frozen chicken, it worked out just about the same in every incarnation.
Again, you get a good crispy exterior and hot interior, which is what I assume/hope we all want in our fried chicken products. In this case, I’m not sure it does such a transformatively better job than the oven, but it beats the hell out of it in timing. An average one meal of frozen chicken is going to be baking for at least 20 – 30 minutes, scaling up depending on size of the family. Using the air fryer, I’m looking at around 6 – 7 minutes from dropping it in to the food being ready. Basically, by the time my oven is done preheating, my air fryer has already finished the work. You get oven-baked quality in near-microwave time.
The caveat to this one is volume. Because the air fryer has a limited sized basket, those of you cooking for larger groups might find that the oven does work out to be quicker rather than making several batches in the air fryer. With the bagels, the quality difference is worth the trade-off, here I would recommend whatever option that best fits your demands.
Frozen Chicken (various): Air fry on 375, checking regularly for desired doneness. Allow longer cooking times for thicker cuts.
Cheeeeese
Okay, so for this last one, we’re going to look at another reheat option, and one smaaaall bit of real cooking. But I promise, it’s manageable. Before that, let’s start with the reheat.
As a guy who loves pizza, yet can no longer chow down an entire pie in one sitting, re-warming that dish in a satisfying way has become something of a white whale. I’ve tried pans, ovens, pizza stones, microwaves, and one ancient ceremony involving fire and an old pizza box. So when I say air frying is the best way to reheat pizza I’ve ever had, that’s coming from a place of research.
Seriously, it is excellent. You get the crisp bubbling cheese, a crust that hasn’t gone soggy as hell, oozing sauce, just everything you want your old pizza to be again. Would one thousand percent recommend, go do it already.
Or, perhaps you’ve read all this and are feeling a bit of an itch to do more than reheat what already exists. Very well then, let’s do one real dish in this blog, albeit a simple one: grilled cheese. The elements are simple: bread of your choosing, cheese, and either butter or mayo.