Rhonda Bracey: At Random

It’s a been a long time since I wrote a blog post, and yes, I’ll get to the air fried sausages soon. After our bathroom renos and my appendix operation earlier in 2023, our world was turned upside down when my Dad passed away. He lived—and died—on his own terms, and while it was an immediate shock, his death wasn’t unexpected. I’m Executor, so there’s that.

Anyhoo…. back to the air fryer… A few weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and join the revolution and get an air fryer. I realised it was the first major change I’d be making to my cooking practices in 40 years (I bought my first microwave oven in 1982 or 1983). At the time, I paid about $800 for that beast, and it was still going strong when we moved to the country in 2007, but there was NO counter space for it in the house we moved into, so I had to get a much smaller microwave. After 20+ years of faithful service, that microwave went to a new home and is probably still going! Microwaving changed how I cooked and added a new tool to my repertoire of techniques. 40 years on and I expect the air fryer to do the same.

The air fryer I bought certainly wasn’t the cheapest around (RRP AU$499, but I got it for $379), but it had 2 big baskets that could be controlled independently or synched, or matched (if you were doing the same thing in each), and that was a big selling point for me. The model I bought was a Ninja Foodi Max XXXL Smart Dual Zone Air Fryer (model AF450). It’s also very quiet, unlike many others, and puts out very little residual heat.

I haven’t used it a lot yet, but suffice to say that it does frozen chips and meat pies really well! I’ve also used it for pork chops and lamb burgers, and last night I tried sausages in it. They were brilliant! Normally, I’d cook sausages in a frying pan (we don’t have a BBQ, for reasons…), starting with caramelising a mixture of onions, mushrooms, and fresh chillies, then adding the sausages and cooking them on a fairly high heat until they were cooked and the onion mix was fairly mushy. My concern was how to get the caramelised onion mixture right in the air fryer—a few YouTubers showed various techniques, but none seemed to give the result I was looking for, so I decided to try something different—par cook the onion mix in the microwave then add to the sausages near the end of the cooking time. And it worked brilliantly!

Here’s what I did:

1. Optional: Remove the base rack of basket 1 in the Ninja and place a piece of bread on the bottom of the basket, then replace the base rack. (I learned this bread trick on YouTube, where the presenters recommended it for things like sausages and bacon as it helps absorb the fat, making the basket easier to clean and helping prevent potential smoke because of the high heat cooking off the excess fat).
2. Put 7 breakfast sausages onto the rack (just a single layer).
3. Set basket 1 to Air Fry setting for 15 mins at 200C.
4. Optional: Cut up one onion, half a big mushroom and 3 bird’s eye chillies, put in a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds at a time, for a total of 90 seconds. This par cooks and softens the onion mixture.
5. At around 7 mins, remove the basket and turn the sausages over/shake them. Replace the basket and continue cooking. (They were looking GOOD! I put in the meat thermometer and they seemed to be cooked through already.)
6. At around 11 mins, I removed the basket again, moved the sausages a bit, then tipped the onion mix over the sausages, spreading it evenly with silicon tongs, then replaced the basket to continue cooking.
7. Every minute or so, I checked and turned/re-spread the onion mix so as to prevent any bits possibly burning. (I probably wouldn’t do this as often next time.)
8. At 15 mins, everything was done. The sausages had a wonderful colour and appearance, as did the onion mix, and the thermometer indicated they were well cooked.
9. I’d pre-cut the hot dog rolls, added sauce and cheese, so I put 1 sausage and some onion mix in each roll, then put the rolls back into the basket after it was turned off to heat through and melt the cheese (there was still some residual heat), while I finished prepping the salad.

Verdict: They were DELICIOUS and I’d use this method any day over doing them in the pan. My husband said they were the best I’d ever cooked! (he hadn’t been as keen on the pork chops or the burgers cooked in the air fryer). Personally, I don’t think the onions were as sweet as doing them in the pan, but it was only a very minor difference in flavour.

Update: I thought the bread under the rack would’ve have absorbed a lot of fat, but these sausages must’ve been lean because the bread was just dried out on the side facing the heat and had almost no fat. The base of the basket was super clean.