Don’t eat the fried foods! We hear that every time we turn around when someone is talking about 
healthy eating. No friend chicken wings, no french fries… the list goes one.
But we all know that we love those fresh hot french fries, or chicken wings fresh out of the fryer tossed with our favorite sauces.
But we no longer have to avoid those treats!
For Christmas, my dad got an Air Fryer and since then he has been playing with making everything from fries and chicken wings to apple pie and zucchini boats. I had the chance to try some chicken wings at Christmas and was amazed by the fact that they were NOT fried in oil! They were tossed in oil and seasoning and then “fried” in nothing but air!
All in just a matter of minutes!
My mom came to spend some time with us this week and brought theirs down so that I could check it out more and see if I wanted to drop the money on one for us. The ones she has is the NuWave 3 quart fryer that she picked up from Kohl’s. Regular price is $119.00 but you can often find them on sale. Plus don’t forget to grab that 30% off coupon that you have sitting on the counter – percent off discounts work for these 🙂
She also picked up the Gourmet accessory kit, which gives you a removable basket as well as a reversible rack and more recipes! The reversible rack is nice for being able to cook 2 different things at one time without just throwing everything in together! This make a perfect option when you are just cooking for 1 person (or even 2 people) as you can cook everything together.
Normally, I would say to put the chicken on the bottom, but when cooking these to together, the cook time for chicken or steak is actually half of what it is for the potatoes. By putting the chicken on the top, you can cook one batch of chicken. Once that is cooked, you can take the chicken out and put in some veggies (or more chicken) and put it back in the fryer to cook, while the fries are still cooking on the bottom!
Over the course of 2 days, we tried making all kinds of different stuff! Everything cooked with no oil.
The avocado fries were amazing! Slices of avocado, dipped in an egg wash and then breaded with panko bread crumbs! To go with these, we also tossed some batches of chicken in a few different sauces to see what we liked better.
Then there was the Coconut chicken – chunks of chicken dredged in egg wash and then tossed in a blend of coconut and panko break crumbs. I thought there were perfect, everyone else decided they had too much coconut on them. For the tortilla chips, we quartered a corn tortilla and brushed each side with a sesame ginger dressing. You could use any dressing or marinade to flavor the tortillas!
We tried a few different marinades for our chicken and steak. In a matter of 10 minutes, the meat was cooked to perfection, full of flavor and had that slight crispiness from the “frying”
The final batch of the night was brussels sprouts and french fries! Each tossing in a little oil and seasoned with salt and garlic.
Almost all of the foods we cooked here can be found in the recipe books that came with either the fryer or the accessory kit. The only one that was not in the books was the corn tortilla chips. That was a creation of my son’s while we were cooking.
Tonight we did also make a batch of Zuchini Boats because my parents had made them a few times and they are always a favorite. The original recipe did not call for pizza sauce but they thought the needed a little something else. zucchini, sliced lengthwise, and seeds removed. Then filled with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and precooked italian sausage! After spending a few minutes in the fryer, YUM!
I can potentially see me breaking down and getting one of these fryers, even if just for the fries! Perfectly cooked sweet potato fries, using only enough oil to toss the potatoes in for cooking. No Vat of fryer grease needed!
Any ideas on what else we should try in the fryer while my mom is here for the weekend? Someone has already suggested DF Oreos. It kinda defeats the idea of using the air fryer to eat healthier, but just to say I tried them….
So, toss some ideas my way! One that I thought of to try tomorrow – bacon wrapped asparagus! But I can’t eat just that, so give me some more ideas!