Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I wanted to see if I could make no-knead bread in my dual basket Ninja air fryer. Various YouTube videos and websites said you can certainly bake bread in an air fryer, so it was time to see for myself. I used the same recipe I’ve used with much success before (see: https://rhondabracey.com/2020/07/15/trying-again-with-no-knead-bread/), adding cheese, jalapeños and chilli flakes to the mix. The dough was quite wet, which was a bit of a concern (was the flour or the yeast too old?). But I continued on anyway, doing all the steps I would normally do to make and prove the dough except for turning on the oven and heating a cast-iron dutch oven.

When the dough was near the end of the first proving stage, I took 2 small foil BBQ trays and made sure they fit the air fryer baskets (I had to turn up the edges and squeeze them a bit, but they fitted OK), then added some parchment paper to each, enough to cover the sides and beyond. When the dough was ready for the final forming into a ball, I added the small cubes of cheese and chopped jalapeños, rolled it a bit on a floured board, then split the mix into two, adding one to each of the foil BBQ trays in the baskets. Then let it sit for the final proving. Once that time was up, I cut away the excess parchment paper and then ‘tented’ the baskets with foil to keep the steam in when cooking (make sure you tuck the foil down the sides of the foil trays otherwise it will fly up into the heating element inside the air fryer).

I knew from what I’d seen and read that I might have to lower the temperature a little and almost certainly would need to lower the cooking time. I didn’t preheat the air fryer—just put the foil-covered baskets into the machine, set it to Air Fryer mode, 210C, for 20 minutes. When it finished, I removed the foil tents. Then I tipped the partially baked bread out of the parchment paper and put it back into the foil trays to cook for a further 10 mins (Air Fryer, 210C). It was lovely and brown and crusty, but the bottoms needed more, so I flipped the bread over and gave it an extra 5 mins at the same settings.

All up, I cooked the bread for about 30-35 minutes, which was about 10 mins less than in the conventional oven, and at a slightly lower temperature. The bonus was no need for preheating time (typically 45 mins waiting for a standard electric oven to heat up to 230C).

The verdict? Two small loaves of bread with far more crusty bits than usual! Very delicious!!! Good crumb, texture, and density, but they didn’t rise as much as I expected (as I said earlier, the mix was very wet and so I suspect the yeast or the flour may not have been at their prime, or it just needed more flour—or it could have been the air fryer style of cooking). In the photos below, I’ve included some tongs to you can get some idea of the size of the loaves. And yes that yellow oozy stuff is cheese!

Would I try it again? Yes!

I confess—I LIKE cold pizza and will have leftover slices for lunch the following day. But today I decided to reheat 2 slices from last night’s pizza in the air fryer for my lunch. And I’m not sure I’ll go back to cold pizza again! Not when this was so quick and gave a lovely crispness.

For my future reference:

• Put pizza slice(s) on some baking paper and into air fryer basket(s)
• Max crisp setting (240C) for 3 minutes ONLY. Any longer and they would have burnt.

Delicious!

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.