Air fryer meal suggestions please .

My daughter gave me this book with some lovely air fryer recipes. The author also has really good instagram videos with step by step instructions for his recipes.

I love my air fryer and use it daily. Anything that you’d normally grill or roast can be cooked in the air fryer if it fits.
www.instagram.com/boredoflunch/?hl=en

I love mine, I purchased reusable liners

I could not live with that cover-

It’s “Bored with Lunch” 😮😮😮😮

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.), in its entry for “bored,” says: “The normal constructions are with with or with by.” However, Fowler’s notes the usage that has caught your attention
“A regrettable tendency has emerged in recent years, esp. in non-standard English in Britain and abroad, to construe the verb with of.”

Same here Maw!

There are few days when mine is not in use. My oven is redundant and is used as another storage area aka a dumping ground.

Tonight will be Tempura prawns, pieces of sweetcorn and French fries.

Have a look at Youtube for ideas. It's brilliant for roast veg - especially parsnips. Yesterday I also did halloumi which I usually grill. It is great for the odd portion - eg three fish fingers or a few mushrooms. I love mine and use it nearly every day.

It depends on the type of air fryer. Some have drawer type fryers. Ours is a Ninja which is an air fryer and pressure cooker.

Thanks for your suggestions so far . We eat a lot of roasted veg so great to hear that can be cooked in the air fryer .

Fish, chops, steak, chicken breasts, whole chickens, roast potatoes, baked potatoes, bread, cakes, Yorkshire puddings. The list is endless. I've had my Ninja dual drawer airfrier for a year. To get started I referred to the handbook supplied. Helpful for temperatures and timings. Hope you enjoy your airfrier, once you get started.

It depends how big your air fryer is. My first one, a circular one was just too small to take 2 of anything.

I then bought a not much bigger one, perhaps a couple of inches wider but it will now hold, the 2p ieces of pork fillet we had for lunch, 2 pork chops, sausages, salmon and broccoli parcels.

I have several 2 portion sized dishes that will go on the air fryer. Yesterday I cooked a large stuffed aubergine. Cut in half. cooked for 20 minutes to soften the pulp and when the stuffing was made . I stuffed the aubergine halves and put themback in the air fryer to brown.

I’ve thought about getting either an air fryer or a multi pot with air fryer facility, but they all look so big - I don’t have the counter space for anything too large, especially if it had to be left out all the time (as I believe they’re quite heavy). I already own a slow cooker which gets lots of use, and a pressure cooker that doesn’t, so am wary of buying something that would sit there hardly used.
There’s only two of us, but I often bulk cook and freeze food, so something too small would probably be a waste.
I must admit, on reading up about the different makes and their features, I get rather confused and so end up more undecided and unsure than ever. I don’t want an expensive mistake sitting on my counter/in the cupboard).
Are air fryers a bit limiting with what you can cook in them as opposed to multi pots? (I understand, of course, that you can’t cook things with liquid in an air fryer).
So many brands, so many choices, so baffling 😁😅.

You can cook anything in an air fryer, as they don't actually fry.

There are two types, what I call the 'bucket' ones, like the Ninja Foodi variety, and the 'mini oven' ones, like the Tower. I have one of each - a Ninja at home and a Tower at our lodge. I am cooking a home made pie in the Tower one now. I made the pie as usual, and am baking it in the 'fryer', which is basically a mini convection oven. Because it is small, it heats up almost instantly and takes far less time to cook things than a big oven.
Anything that will cook in an oven will cook in it. I have baked, made Yorkshire puds, casseroles, roast potatoes, rice pudding - all sorts of things. As it has shelves, you can cook a few different things at once, but you have to rotate them as the ones on top cook faster than the things on the bottom. I've made a (small) Sunday dinner in mine, just to see if I could. The peas ended up being done in a bowl in the microwave, but otherwise I did a roast, yorkshires, roast potatoes and parsnips and an Eve's pudding in it, and it was lovely.

I like the Ninja less, as the pot is not suitable for putting on the table, yet is too small to fit in a casserole dish, so if you wanted to make, say, a cottage pie, you would have to do it directly in the pot and plate it up before serving. Also, getting things in and out of it is a faff, and it is easy to burn yourself. Stacking foods so you can have eg chicken and chips cooked together means that you need racks, which are fiddly and tend to tip over. OTOH, the Ninja has lots of functions, so if you don't have an electric pressure cooker and/or a slow cooker, it does those things as well. It also does things most people probably don't need often, such as make yoghurt and dehydrates fruit and meat. If you want to do those things, it's the gadget for you .

Personally, and people will disagree, if I had got the Tower first I wouldn't have one for the Ninja, I'd have got another one of those, BUT I also have an Instant Pot which pressure cooks, and a slow cooker, and that makes a difference.

I originally purchased a small one draw air fryer , which I used a lot to cook frozen items from the freezer, fish , scampi, sausage, fish cakes, but because of the draw size you could not cook two things at the same time, so I upgraded to a Ninja, I love the Pressure Cook setting, which keeps food warm after it has run it cycle, also the slow cooker is great, and the air fryer basket is larger which is what I needed but I have tried cooking a whole chicken , which was cooked but not to my liking (falling off the bone) so I still cook larger meals in the oven , because if you are putting a air fryer on two or 3 times to cook a meal you may as well use the oven. We prefer food cooked in the Ninja AF, as it doesn't dry things out. They do take up room but I have out on a unit. Basically most things you cook in the oven can be done in the AF. Loads of recipes on Pinterest and a few on the recipe section on GN.

I've just taken the pie out of the Tower one . Leek, cheese and potato (Mr Dog is vegetarian).

I ve just got a small one drawer Tower makes lovely scones and cheese straws haven’t used my oven since Christmas, when I got my air fryer as a present
I don’t eat meat of fish so it’s lovely for lots of vegi dishes especially Indian ones
And a lovely little quick thing is tinned potatoes cut in half coated in whatever flavouring you like plus a little coating of oil yummy

Oh, that looks delicious, Doodledog.

Do you mind saying which tower model you have?

That’s one of the things that puts me off the ninja - not being able to bring the pot to the table, and also, it’s hinged lid which looks as if you’d need a lot of clearance from wall cupboards so as not to hit the cupboard base with it when opening. It also sounds quite fiddly, which would put me off.

Mine is an 5 in 1 Xpress, like this one. I paid about £50 for it just before the cost of living crisis, and they have rocketed in price since then. 😡 Mine is manual, so you turn the knobs on the top for time and temperature, and the 'Pro' ones have buttons instead.

A lot of the 'things in 1' that they claim to do are basically the same thing - roast and bake for instance. They come with a rotisserie for chickens, which is fun, but I hardly use mine as Mr Dog doesn't eat meat. I've just checked, and the 5 functions are - roast, bake, rotisserie, air-fry (ie roast with oil ) and dehydrate.

The 10 in 1 version is the same as mine, but has more accessories. You can use your existing dishes/cake tins etc if they will fit, and Home Bargains do tins specially for air fryers that are perfect.

Anything that can go in the oven can be cooked in the air fryer.
We had Chinese spare ribs tonight.
DH can do a full roast for 2 in it.
I attach my handy conversion chart.

Ziplok

I’ve thought about getting either an air fryer or a multi pot with air fryer facility, but they all look so big - I don’t have the counter space for anything too large, especially if it had to be left out all the time (as I believe they’re quite heavy). I already own a slow cooker which gets lots of use, and a pressure cooker that doesn’t, so am wary of buying something that would sit there hardly used.
There’s only two of us, but I often bulk cook and freeze food, so something too small would probably be a waste.
I must admit, on reading up about the different makes and their features, I get rather confused and so end up more undecided and unsure than ever. I don’t want an expensive mistake sitting on my counter/in the cupboard).
Are air fryers a bit limiting with what you can cook in them as opposed to multi pots? (I understand, of course, that you can’t cook things with liquid in an air fryer).
So many brands, so many choices, so baffling 😁😅.

If you have a dish that fit the air fryer you can cook foods with liquid in them. The first thing I ever cooked in mine was a sausage casserole. I browned the sausages and onion in it first then added the ingredients to a casserole dish and put it in the air fryer. The name does mislead a lot of people...it does not fry it cooks.

Hi Doodledog, can I ask you how you cook different dishes that would need a different temperature? I have a double drawer AF (2/3 and 1/3 drawers) which is very good but cannot sych finish etc. I also, don't like the pre set icons I would prefer one with AF, roast, bake, reheat. I have been looking again and I am stuck between an oven style like yours or one which has 2 equal drawers but the divider can be removed to make one large drawer.

I can't speak for the ones with drawers, as neither of mine have them, but the Tower one is a higher temperature on the top shelf, getting lower as they get near the bottom. So you would put the low temp thing in on the bottom and the high temperature things at the top, and keep checking until you get the hang of it. You can't set the different shelves to different temperatures, but there is a discernible difference.

There are cookbooks and Facebook groups for the various different types, but I tend to just use trial and error. The FB groups can attract oddbods, (as these things do) and the cookbooks probably won't tell you anything you don't already know if you cook a lot.

Thank you for posting which model you have, Doodledog. I I’ll do some research now 😊.

No problem. Get back to me if there’s anything else I can tell you. I only know about those two types, but use them both a lot and understand the differences between them.

Thanks, Doodledog.