Are these crazy air fryer recipes brilliant or dumb?

By Cheri Sicard
When we did a recent readers’ poll of what appliances you take along in your RV, air fryers were near the top of the list. In fact, many of you said you used ONLY your air fryer for all your RV cooking needs. To be sure, owners of air fryers, both in and out of RVs, are coming up with all kinds of unique air fryer recipes and techniques for using this gadget. Some sound brilliant, others sound just kind of weird.

In the video below, the team from ProHomeCooks wanted to put some of these odd air fryer recipes to the test to find out of they were, in fact, brilliant, or just a silly novelty. To produce the video they scoured social media and TikTok videos and found the most compelling ones.

Spoiler alert—some are great, others not so much. But if you own an air fryer, you are going to want to watch the video as you are sure to pick up a new technique or two to add to your air fryer arsenal.

Odd air fryer recipes covered:

• Chicken and Potato Nuggets: These nuggets, made from a chicken and potato paste, failed to live up to the hype. They lacked crunch. However, ProHomeCooks has an actual crispy nugget air fryer recipe that will actually work. The verdict: Fail.
• Perfectly Cooked Steak: This technique, which uses the air fryer for a reverse seared steak that’s finished on the stovetop, actually made sense. There are some good steak cooking tips in this segment, regardless of whether or not you use an air fryer. While the timing and temperature still needed some tweaking and refining, this produced a steak with a perfectly seared crust. Watch the video to see how. The verdict: Genius.
• Air Fryer Cheese Balls: This recipe uses store-bought dough and cubes of cheese to make a hot-from-the-oven cheesy snack. I thought it looked genius, but the video gave it a fail verdict just because he thought it was too much work, although he did offer some easier and quicker alternatives.
• Air Fryer Veggie Omelet: This recipe puts a veggie omelet on the table in about 5 minutes. It looked good in the original TikTok video. But when our chef put it to the test, the eggs did not cook properly. The verdict: Fail.
• Bubble Tea: This odd air fryer recipe uses the machine to roast tea to make iced boba tea. While the finished tea was tasty, this is probably not the best method for this dish and there are easier ways. Verdict: Fail.
• Air Fryer Roasted Chicken: This test was based on a recipe that had more than 16 million views. The video looked as if it might have been altered, as the chicken almost looked too perfect. So, our intrepid host put it to the test. Like the steak segment, there are some good general chicken cooking tips here, too. Like the steak, this needed a little time and temperature adjustments, but it got a Genius grade from our host as it produced a perfectly cooked moist chicken, although his did not look as browned and delicious as the original. So I think I might have given this one a fail. Crispy skin on the chicken is IMPORTANT!

Do you use your air fryer in an unusual way? Let us know about it in the comments.

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