Finding a Way to Make Healthy Chips
One of the main reasons people gravitate towards air fryers is because they’ve heard they can get great fries and chips by using only a fraction of the oil you’d need if you were using a deep fryer. Watching a basket of sliced potatoes being submerged into a vat of boiling oil is almost enough to kill your appetite (I said, almost).
Then, the question is, can you really get a great tasting chip from an air fryer?
Well, let’s take a look at an air fryer and how it works.
How an Air Fryer Works
Air fryers are built in much the same way as a convection oven. The biggest difference is that you usually work in smaller batches with an air fryer. The food isn’t submerged in oil, it’s submerged in a bath of swirling hot air. The heat cooks up the inner part of the food while the agitation of the hot air crisps up the outside of the food. Without all of the oil, the food is cooked pretty much prior to a smoking point. The food needs to be redistributed every now and then to make sure all of the food is exposed to the heat. Different manufacturers have different ways of getting this done. Some air fryers have baskets which you must remove and shake during the cooking process. T-fal actually has a paddle that turns the food for you.
The things you can cook and the amount of food you can make will depend on the science and the size that went into developing your particular air fryer. Beyond the distribution, some air fryers have a very low temperature base, allowing you to use it as a food dehydrator.
Tips For Cooking Air Fryer Chips and French Fries
As far as cooking french fries goes, you’re more likely to get an oven baked potato texture than a “fried” texture the thicker you slick them. The middle will be softer but the outside will definitely be crunchy. It’s a trade off for giving up all of that oil. If you use a french fry cutter, this will help not only save you time, it will also help you to determine how thick or thin you really want those fries to be.
Potato chips are much trickier to master. The thickness of the potato, the right temperature and how much contact the potatoes have with each other are all much more important when cooking potato chips.
Whichever you choose to make, there are three elements you have to get right to pull off a great snack: picking the right potatoes, slicing and soaking.
Potatoes. The first thing to get right is picking the right potato. Russet and Yukon Gold are both great choices. The choice of potato is also the reason the temperature and time to cook are hard to pinpoint. In the beginning, stick with one kind of potato. It’ll be easier to figure out the time and temperature if you do.
Slicing. You’ll either need to use a mandoline or a dedicated multi-food slicer to get the chips as thin as they need to be. If they’re too thick, you end up with weird, rounded mushy French fries. French fries also have dedicated French fry slicers so you don’t need super knife skills to get an evenly sliced batch of potatoes.
Soaking. Starch is the enemy of a good fry. Any top-rated chef will soak their potatoes at least twice to remove the starch. Some even soak them overnight. The flip side of this coin is drying the potatoes. If they’re not dry, the oil can’t set into the potato fiber. This only crisps up and seals the outside, leaving you with soggy chips. Those same top chefs have been known to dry their sliced, soaked potatoes on racks in the refrigerator to ensure their potatoes are completely dry.
A Couple of Other Tips
Be sure you don’t over soak the potatoes with oil. Spritzing the potatoes instead of tossing in a bowl of oil is ideal.
Keep the potatoes as separated as possible. If you’re not using an air fryer that moves the food for you like a T-fal, shake the basket often – more than you normally would. Once potatoes get stuck together, they never cook evenly.
It takes some time and experimentation to get your favorite fries and chips right. However, if you take the time to master the technique that’s right for your air fryer, you’ll have a much healthier and tastier version of your favorite snack. Your biggest problem will be keeping friends and family away from your batches of golden goodness.
