In an attempt to convince myself that air fryers are not cooking hair dryers I decided to try making 3 different recipes in an air fryer to see how it compares and if it’s worth it – English scones, onion rings & fajitas get given the air fryer treatment here! They were all pretty good – the chicken in the fajitas was tender and the air fryer blistered the peppers really well, the scones were baked through and the onion rings crispy! Like this? Try air fryer chicken
Onion Rings
Cut the onions into nice thick bands as per ingredients, this really for me is important in getting a good onion taste! In one bowl add the panko breadcrumbs, another bowl mix the egg and milk together, the final bowl mix the flour, paprika, and a pinch of salt together until combined.
Put the onion rings in the flour mixture, then dunk in the egg mixture and then finally into the breadcrumbs, lifting the crumbs on to fully coat. Repeat with all pieces of onion.
Cook in the air fryer at 180c in batches ensuring they are not on top of each other for around 8 minutes. Spray them with oil at the start and when you’ve reached about 4 minutes, turn them over and spray again, keep your eye on them and cook a little longer if you like until golden brown. Repeat with the rest of the onions. Best served dunked in your dip of choice.
Fajitas
Mix the chicken, onion, peppers, oil and seasoning together in a bowl until well coated. Add to the air fryer bucket and cook at 200c for approx. 15 mins or so. Until the chicken is charred and the vegetables are blistered. Open the air fryer and stir the food every 5 minutes during cooking. For the last 30 seconds add in a few tortillas to warm through, put something like a small ramekin on top of them to stop them possibly getting blown up by the air into the heating element like in my video!
Serve the filling on the warmed tortilla with sour cream, coriander and a squeeze of lime juice, amazingly good and the chicken was super tender!
English scones
Rub the butter into the flour with your fingers and thumbs or using a pastry blender gadget. Then slowly add the milk using a fork or your hands to bring it together into a rough dough. Take it out of the bowl onto a floured surface and knead it a little into some more flour but only for a minute or so. Roll out the dough using more flour if needed and use a 5cm cookie cutter to make the scone shapes (use other shape cutter if you like!)… I found that the ones that were approx. 1.5 – 2 inches thick rised really well. So roll out the dough and re-use off cuts to make more. Place each of the cut scones on it’s own island of baking parchment.
Place in the air fryer spread apart and cook at 160c for a good 15 minutes, possibly slightly longer until golden brown on top and the sides. Allow to cool on a wire rack whilst cooking the other scones. Serve once cooled with jam and cream.