My sister and her husband love their air fryer so much that they upgraded to a bigger model and lent me their original one to try out for myself. We have made pork chops, onion rings, fish and a few other things. Most have been pretty good. The air fryer does a great job on items that should be crispy on the outside, blowing hot air around like a convection oven does.
I came across a recipe for Air-Fryer Potato Chips at Taste of Home that looked very easy so I decided to give it a try. First I made a batch of french onion dip because you simply cannot eat potato chips without it!
The recipe for the potato chips is super simple, slice potatoes very thin, soak in ice water, dry potato slices, then cook them in a single layer in the air fryer.
Next thing you know Dave and I were enjoying Happy Hour!
The chips were good and definitely crispy but a little thick for me. I did use a mandolin slicer but next time will try to adjust it to create thinner slices. On the other hand, the french onion dip was delightful!!!
When I was telling my girl gang about the potato chips on our twice weekly ZOOM call, Julie mentioned she had seen an Air-Fryer donut recipe I should try. Loving donuts like I do, and feeling confident from my potato chip experiment I figured I couldn’t lose. Silly me!
The first issue I had was that the recipe I used from The Kitchn for Easy Air Fryer Donuts called for Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Biscuits. These are the premium in the canned biscuit world. I should have known before I made the trip to the store during these days of empty shelves they might be low on these. What I found was that there was not a Pillsbury baking product left on the shelves. I had to settle for the store’s brand of biscuits that were small, flat and misshapen right out of the can. I went ahead with the recipe anyway, cut out the holes and placed them in the Air-Fryer.
The recipe calls for cooking them 5-6 minutes and turning half way through. Once they were done I rolled half in cinnamon sugar and glazed the other half.
The first few I made were not just crispy but hard so I adjusted the cooking time. I also tried putting two of the biscuits together to get a thicker donut but this just resulted in a chewy donut…..basically a glazed biscuit. When eating them warm they were ok but I would hesitate to call them good. I wonder if using the better quality Pillsbury biscuits or even making homemade biscuit dough would make them better?
I have used the Air-Fryer enough to discover a couple of things with at least the model/brand I am using. First, setting the temperature is tricky……there is a wheel with temperature numbers on it but no real indicator of what temperature you are selecting. Additionally, the timer is just another wheel to turn that is not very precise for selecting time. Since the machine turns off when you pull out the basket, for making these donuts I turned the wheel to the ten minute range but used Alexa to set an actual timer. Having a digital display of temperature and timer is probably available on upgraded models and what I would look for if I actually buy one myself.
I have not decided if I am going to try and make the donuts again, never say never, but I do know that for a mere $1 each I can always get one of these at Hy_Vee.
Let me know if you have ever made donuts in your Air-Fryer and how they turned out!
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