Transcription
Wow, so the first time I ever used an air fryer was in this video, right here, 7 years ago. I went in very skeptical, came out an air fryer fanatic. And since then, I have tested hundreds of recipes, pretty much everything you can possibly air fry, I've tested over the years. I've put out dozens of air fryer videos, racking in over a 100 million views, and I've read thousands of your comments on the recipes you really resonate with. So I wanted to put together one video with my top 10 air fryer recipes of all time. These are the recipes that all of you have loved over the years, plus the things that I still make on a weekly basis. And we're going to start things off with breaking down a whole chicken because air fryers, it turns out, are just really exceptional for chicken meal prep.
Now, of course, you don't need to buy whole chicken and break it down yourself, but it turns out that every single piece of this chicken gets used in like four different recipes on this list. Which brings me to the number 10 spot on this list: the ultimate roasted chicken stock, an essential for me when it comes to meal prep. So once I have all of these pieces of chicken, I'm going to save the breast, wings, and thighs for upcoming recipes. And I'll take the remaining carcass, drumstick, and skin and pop that right into my air fryer. Of course, the drumsticks, those would be valuable in other recipes, just not anything that I'm air frying today, so they will also make great stuff.
Now, I generally cook this on just a medium heat over a longer period period of time. So I'll start off 20 minutes at 375, and we'll see where we're at. Right, so that's where we're at now. You can see some pretty good browning, but I think we could definitely render more fat, get it a little more brown. So I'm just going to do five more minutes. All right, now that is perfect, fully rendered, skin golden brown, ready to S. Now, once roasted, they go right into a slow cooker or a pressure cooker or just a stock pot, whatever you use to make your stock. And I'll cover the roasted chicken bones with water and aromatics are completely optional. I'm going to add a full head of garlic and some onion and slow cook that for around 8 to 12 hours. I find gives you a really nice flavorful roasted stock. And of course, from all of that skin and fat that render down in the roasting process, it catches in the bottom of the air fryer, and you just want to dump that off and save it to cook with over the next few days. And after about 10 hours, I'll strain off the bones, I'll strain off the aromatics, and boom, you have by far the most simple, yet effectively delicious way to make a stock, which makes up probably around 90% of the broth and stock I use in my household.
Coming in at the number nine spot, we have crispy air-fried tofu. And I can tell you, since I learned this technique, tofu has never touched a pan again in my kitchen. It's just so easy. All you need is a big block of firm tofu. And what's great is you really don't need to dry it off, since since it dries out when you air fry it. You can cut it up into nice even cubes. Sometimes I'll do that, but most of the time I'm too lazy and I just rip it up into little chunks and put that right into the air fryer. Then I'll spray it down with whatever oil I have on hand, I'll hit it with some salt, and that goes right into the air fryer. So we're just going to do 375. We'll roast for 10 minutes, and then we'll start shaking it up. So we're 10 minutes in, you can see got that nice base brown, but it's not crispy yet, but you can toss it, no problem. So now we're just going to cook for another 5 minutes. I'll toss it every 1 or 2 minutes until it's perfect. Here we go, look at that crispiness. And trust me, once you have these little crispy tofu chunks, you will find ways to use them. I'll throw them in salads, I'll throw them in soups, they also make a great meat replacement for really any stir fry.
Now, before we move on to number eight, I have some very exciting news, which is the launch of this thing right here, the Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook. Now, the reason I made this is because air fryers, for me, have been so influential. I've collected all of these recipes over the years that I still use daily in my meal prep, and I wanted to bring them all together in one convenient companion that you could have with you in the kitchen while you're doing your own meal prep. So this book has all 10 of the recipes on this list, obviously, because they are my favorite, plus a bunch more. Again, all of these recipes are things that I've tested over the years that I still use today. And if you're an air fryer fan, I think you will really get some good use out of this book. So if you're interested, check out the link below. And we will move on to number eight, which is one of my favorite recipes in this book. I call it healthier falafel. And since first making it, it's the only way I have ever made falafel since.
So this recipe starts out like any authentic falafel recipe. We got to soak some chickpeas overnight until they're fully hydrated. And what I do is I throw them in a towel and I'll just roll that around a bit to absorb any excess moisture on the chickpeas. I'll dump them into a food processor along with some onions, garlic, basil, parsley, about half the juice of a lemon, some salt to season, and I'll pulse that down to you get a consistency just like this. If you don't have one of these special falafel scoopers, just use a spoon like this to scoop some up and then kind of form it in your hand. And I will add about six to nine pieces directly to my air fryer. Now, according to the book, you say 370 around 8 to 9 minutes. See what happens. All right, looking good. You can go a little bit more on the browning if you want, but I'm happy with that. Carly, when she first started working here, never used an air fryer, anti-air fryer, sort of coming from the restaurant world. I see a lot of that. I hear a lot of that. And coming from like a really small kitchen with no counter space, that is my biggest resistance to it. Yeah. Oh, like in your house, not in a restaurant, you're saying? In my house, your house, as a home cook. But now that you have an air fryer. But now that I have an air fryer, I do use it. You're converted. I am a true evangelist. And Carly has converted. And like, this to me is such a good reason why air fryers are the best. I don't deep fry falafel anymore. It's just so much oil. And this is a great product. It lives in its own world because you can't bake falafel that well in the oven. I've never had a baked falafel in the oven that I think is good. No, because they don't stay crispy. Aren't these amazing? They're really good. That is so good. That's good. You're converted. I'm converted. Also, I think now, like, I'd rather have an air fryer on my counter than have my apartment smell like fire oil. Yeah. You remember when deep fryers, like countertop deep fryers? I had one in my catering days. I feel like those things have dropped off since air fryers have come out. I mean, because why would you use that over this? That was also such a novelty thing, like you said. I used that a few times and I'm like, I don't want nasty oil. What do you do with all of this oil? Yeah.
Coming in at number seven, we've got grilled cheese in the air fryer, but a very special grilled cheese because it starts off with crisping up some onions. So I've got two small onions here. I will just slice those up nice and thin, and they get added right to the air fryer. I'll spray those down with some oil, and I'm going to cook them on a low heat so they sort of dehydrate a little bit and caramelize over time. So 300 usually does the trick for about 15 minutes until they're crispy like this. Now, I'm a luck man because I have a beautiful fresh-baked sandwich loaf right here. And I'll take two slices. I'm going to add some cheddar cheese. Anything that melts will work great for this. And then on goes those crispy onions. And this is not in the actual cookbook, but I have so many incredible heirloom tomatoes coming in right now that I could not resist slicing one up and just throwing that in the mix. Then this gets coated with some butter, or you could just spray it with oil, and into the air fryer goes. Just like the book says, we're going to do 358 [Music] minutes. After trying it with the tomato, I don't know if I can call that optional anymore. Oh my god.
Coming in at number six, we have one of my favorite full meals to make in this thing, which is the Teriyaki and Crispy Broccoli Salmon Bowl. Which starts off with a nice piece of salmon. This is a pretty big filet, so I'm going to cut it in half to portion it out. And I'm personally slicing off the skin today. You can air fry it if you would like. A lot of times I'll air fry the skin separately and add it on later. And I'll season it up with salt and pepper. And this can go in the fridge overnight to brine, or you could cook it right away, which I'm going to be doing. So I'll just coat it in a little bit of olive oil and throw it right into the air fryer. So there's a few ways you can go on cooking your salmon. Going to place it right in the middle. If your air fryer has a broil setting, you can set it for broil, probably needs 6, 7 minutes, or you could just regular regular air fryer roast at 380, that will work as well. I'm going to broil. All right, so now this is optional. I've got my teriyaki sauce here, recipe in the book. Right before the salmon is done, you can see it's got a nice crust already. If you just take a little brush and give it a little basting, then I'll throw it back in and just finish the cooking, and that glaze will just cook right into the crust. So now that we have our beautiful teriyaki salmon.
Number five on this list is either crispy broccoli or crispy cauliflower. Both of these veggies take sort of equal first place for the veggie I cook the most in the air fryer. And you've seen me do the time trials with cauliflower before. You're saving a good 30 minutes by not having to preheat the oven, and just the intensity of cooking that you get from an air fryer, which for me, with my busy lifestyle, feeding kids, I am taking every single time. So to finish off the teriyaki salmon bowl, I just sliced up some florets, coated them with some oil and some salt, threw them in the air fryer, got nice and crispy, and plated everything up. So to serve it up, I've got some white rice. That right there, look at the inside of that, still a little bit medium rare. You can cook it longer if you want. More piece, crispy air fryer broccoli over here. Horse, beautiful teriyaki sauce. I love this meal because it's complete, and most of it happens in the air fryer, so there's not much mess. So good. Wow. Salmon is another item that I now exclusively cook in the air FR.
All right, so we have four left, and three chicken recipes made this top four. Starting with number four, we've got the crispy soy chicken. Shout out Tiffy Cooks, her recipes are the best. She always comes up in my viral recipe series, and this crispy soy chicken has become a go-to for me. It's really simple to make. You take some chicken thigh, and I'll grate in some garlic and ginger, and then I'll hit it with some five spice powder, which I just ground up myself. Then I add a few tablespoons of dark soy sauce. You can use regular soy sauce, you will get a much deeper flavor and color if you use the dark soy. And finally, just a little bit of honey to sweeten it up. And this will marinate overnight until it looks like this. Then right into the air fryer. All right, chicken looking great. We're going to put this skin side up, cuz that's where the heating element is on our air fryer, we want that skin crispy. I am going to just, so factory settings, 385, and we'll start with 10 minutes, and we'll check in after that. All right, here we go. Woah, you barely can see it. Look at the caramelization and the bubbles on that chicken. That is [Music] nuts. I've made this dish with regular soy sauce and dark soy sauce, which I have here, and you can see the dark soy sauce, you get a much darker, more intense chicken. This really is a simple dish. I can smell the roasted five spice in there. Mmm. Woah. The closest thing I can think of is that mall-style bourbon chicken. You get a real infusion of flavor from the marinade. There's no salt other than the soy sauce, and you don't need it. And you don't really need a sauce either, because that salt carries through the entire dish. That is awesome. Thanks again, Tiffy Cooks.
Now coming in at number three, we've got what I call my family favorite chicken finger because everyone in my family loves these things. I probably make them every single week. I first figured these out from testing six different chicken tenders to get the best in this video right here. And the cornflake breading was number one. Pure corn flakes. So that's what I do. I grind up some corn flakes. I make a three-part breading, you know how this works at this point. Now, what I love about the air fryer is you can batch cook these chicken tenders. So if you're making some food for your kids, you could just fry a few up. You can pop some, like I have right here, in the fridge. These will last a few days in the fridge and stay fine. Or you can take these and throw them in the freezer, and they'll last in your freezer, obviously, for a lot longer. And you can just pop them off and throw them in there. They'll just take a little longer to cook. Now, these things not only look amazing, but something about just the corn flakes taste amazing. Now, kids love these things, but really, they just taste like a perfect chicken katsu at the end of the day. And I will eat these any day of the week.
Coming in at the number two spot, we had to have french fries. Very high on this list, but not any old french fries. Just like the chicken, a few years ago, I tested every single french fry you can make in the air fryer, and this came in at the number one spot. I'm using some Burbank potatoes from my garden, but like I say in the book, any single potato paired with this technique and air fried is going to be good. Trust me, I've tried pretty much all of them. So it's a pretty standard thrice-cooked fry. You slice up the potatoes, skin on or off, up to you. I'll first cook them in some boiling water for about 10 minutes, just until they're cooked through but still holding their shape completely. Then they get drained off, and I'll place them in the air fryer, give them a spray, and send them off for their first cook. We are twice frying these. We're going to start off with our sort of par-cook, 385, 10 minutes. All right, first cook. You can see just a sort of light crispy coating. Now, you can let these sit in the fridge overnight, you can freeze them, they're just par-cooked fries. If they're looking dry, you can give them another spray to shake, and I'm going to go right back in because I don't have the patience and I just want them next. Now, 400, we're going up to, and we'll do another 8 to 10 minutes. All right, so it's 4 minutes left, and this is when I start. You can see they're getting crispy, so I'll just give it a shake every one or two minutes just to make sure the crispiness is even. All right, let's see what we got. Perfection.
And finally, number one on this list. Did you guess it right? You probably did. Chicken wings. The amount of chicken wings that I have made in the air fryer over the last 7 years is insane. And this specific recipe is kind of converted from a few, a few years ago. I did put out a video testing six different techniques for chicken wings. The recipe that I put in the book is a slightly converted version of that, something that I think is just a little easier to do than the winner of that video, because at the core, that's what air frying is all about. It's got to be simple, that's the whole point of this machine. So I only had two wings from that whole chicken breakdown, which is not going to cut it. So I got another pack, which I broke down into pieces. And the wings go into a bowl, and I hit them with about 2 tablespoons of flour. Then you can use any type of barbecue spice mix you have. Something like this will do. I'm actually using the leftover Chipotle barbecue spice mix from my Chipotle video because it is incredible. So I'll throw that onto the wings. If your spice mix is salt-free, of course, add some salt at this point. And they should have a nice even flour and spice coating, just like this. Now, these can go right in the air fryer, but I do like letting them sit in the fridge so that seasoning can penetrate a bit and the exterior will dry out a little bit to give you extra crispiness. Once these are air fry, you don't want to overcrowd these so they won't get as crispy. It's important. So I'll probably do half, spread them out nicely. That's plenty. Now, if you don't have flour in there, you don't really need oil because the fat renders, but I'm just going to give him the lightest spray just to start things off so we get that perfect crisp on the exterior. I'm going to go 400. We'll start with 9 minutes, 9 or 10 minutes. All right, just going to check in at 9 minutes. Looking so nice. I'm going to do like one or two more minutes. Let's do two more minutes. So just that very light coating of flour gives it that nice thin, crackly crust. These are just perfect to me. Of course, you can coat these in any barbecue sauce you want, or you can just eat them like this, which I do a lot. Mmm. That recipe perfected over the years. Harley, would you say you're a wing connoisseur? Um, no. No, but I do like wings. Okay. They're perfect. Yeah. I wouldn't even put barbecue sauce on. Yeah, a lot of times I just serve those like with a side salad. So good. So crispy. So those were my top 10 recipes. Remember to check out my new Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook. A lot of the air fryer cookbooks that I've seen, they're like 500 recipes, which I think is so unnecessary. I wanted to create something that was attainable, something simple, that would really work as a guide for recipes that have one, changed my life, and hopefully will change your life. So check it out, click the link below. We've got a special offer, and let me know what you think.