Nobody really knows what happens to our food in an air fryer, as the baskets are often contained and pauses when a compartment is opened. But one homeowner, who swears by grilling steak in hers, owns an air fryer with transparent baskets, which means you can see your food cooking like you would in an oven.
The woman shared her kitchen hack on social media and promised her followers the meat would turn out “juicy and sizzly”. The hassle-free method will help you cook the perfect steak under record-breaking time. The quick method prevents the steak from drying out, even if you are cooking it between medium to well done. Placing the meat into a transparent air fryer container, the cooking method can be seen, with the steak shrinking in size and sizzling away.
What it doesn’t do, is fly all over the place, which is what happens to some lighter weight food items in the air fryer. This happens because air fryers are powered by air, with a heating element near the top of the fryer emitting heat into the air in the cooking chamber while a fan circulates the heated air rapidly around it. For anyone using the airfryer to toast bread, for example, it actually flies around the compartment, making it especially hard for anyone cooking the likes of melted cheese on toast, as the slices are chucked off almost instantly.
But, due to the weight of a piece of steak, it actually stays in tact and cooks as you’d expect. And using the air fryer offers a better way to ensure your steak is kept soft – and it might even be better than using an oven. The cook, demonstrating, started off by seasoning the steak, with what looked like pepper. Once she was done, she placed the meat into the basket and increased the temperature to 200C ( 400F ). The TikToker switched the timer on for 14 minutes and then let the air fryer do the rest.
Once it reached the halfway point, she intervened and flipped the scrumptscious meat over. When she removed the meat from the basket, it looked glazed with a shimmering brown, as juices bubbled around it. Cooking enthusiasts said the steak looked “yummy” and asked if other meat cooked just as good such as chicken wings.
Gabriel Purdey, co-owner of the Ruxstons farm shop in Somerset, revealed why he likes to cook steak in the air fryer. He said: “Cooking a steak in an air fryer is actually quite daunting the first time because if you have always cooked it in a pan or on a griddle you can see it cooking and naturally learn how ‘done’ it needs to look before it is ready for your own personal taste. When using the air fryer you will have to trust your timing, and this naturally will take a bit of practice, and maybe even a couple of errors in the learning process.”
He added: “I personally found the steak slightly different to one cooked in a frying pan or griddle, the steak was slightly more tender, it actually was more like a sirloin than a normal rump steak in terms of softness, whilst the fat was slightly more shrivelled up and possibly slightly chewier, but not in a negative way, just not quite as melt in the mouth as I normally experience.
“Overall cooking a steak in an air fryer is a quicker, and cleaner way of enjoying a beef steak, but if you are having friends around it is possibly not quite the show that cooking them on a griddle or BBQ would give you.”
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