Air Fryer 101 - How to Use an Air Fryer - Beginner? Start HERE!

So you bought an air fryer and you've got a new appliance but you're not quite sure how to use it. Today I'm going to be sharing some basics on how to use an air fryer and a few do's and don'ts. If you're new here, welcome! My name is Kathy from Fabulously Frugal and on Sunday mornings I'm sharing an air fryer recipe or an instant pot recipe with you. It's always fun when you have a new appliance or even if you're an air fryer pro to discover more recipes and that's exactly what I'm doing for you. I've got a brand new Kasori air fryer here. I also have my trusty Philips air fryer that I've been using for about a year now because I thought it would be fun to show you a new air fryer and what to do when you first get it. And rather than me just sitting here and talking to you about air fryers, I'm going to show you. I've got two recipes to show you on two different air fryers. I'm going to take it really slow, step by step, so by the end of this video you will feel empowered to take that air fryer out of the box and start using it. Are you ready? Let's go! So what's the big deal about air fryers anyway? Right here I've got the number one selling air fryer on Amazon and let's just get one thing straight. An air fryer is not a deep fryer but it's an excellent and healthier alternative. If you can bake it, if you can grill it, if you can fry it, you can cook it up in your air fryer. Why this is better than a deep fryer is because it's way less messy and I don't know about you but I cannot stand that stinky smell that lingers on your clothes forever when you deep fry something. Basically it's a mini convection oven which means in this chamber you'll find most of them have baskets. I haven't even used this one before. Whoops! And down in here you'll see there's a heating element and above that is a powerful fan that's going to just push the heat down up and around to go all over the food. It makes it juicy, crispy if you're air frying and baking will take less time and of course it's less messy. I also love the air fryer especially in the summertime because it doesn't heat up your house like turning on the oven will. Now there are different types of air fryers. Today I'm going to just be talking about the types that have the basket here. The basket's nice because you can pull it out when things are cooking. I love using instant rate thermometers, checking the temperatures of the chicken or steak or pork, whatever I'm cooking in here and you just can't do that as easily with a regular oven. So what to expect the very first time you use your air fryer? Well of course take it out of the box. You'll want to spend a little time reading through the instruction manuals. I know it's not always fun to do but each model does vary just a little bit and we'll have some different things about it. So before you use it for the very first time, wash out that air fryer with some nice hot soapy water and a soft dishcloth or a sponge. You could even run that basket through the dishwasher to make sure it's nice and clean. Then give that a quick dry. Now I don't necessarily stress out about getting every nook and cranny dry because the air fryer can also dry itself because it's got that powerful heating element in there. So I am just going to double check that there's no other packaging inside anywhere so I don't start anything on fire. This one is a good one. It has these little ledges that keep it lifted off the counter because this could cause some damage to a countertop. So you'll want to make sure if you don't have an air fryer that has those little ledges, get something like a big wood board. Something that would protect your countertop from the heat of the air fryer. So now it's time for the test run. That's where you're going to just run your air fryer empty. Not only will it just make sure everything's working properly, it's going to cook off those factory oils and kind of get rid of that yucky smell that comes with new appliances, right? Refer to your owner's manual, but I'm going to run this at 400 for five minutes. That's the directions for the Kasori brand. So you'll just find the power button. There it is. And usually all you need to do is find some arrows. Okay, so now the temperature's flashing. And then I'm going to hit the button again. And now it's doing time. And I'm just going to hold that down to five. It looks like this one has a play button. Now you can see it's just going to run, cook everything off. As I do this test run, here's where a lot of the heat's coming out. Now you can hear the air fryer. That's one thing that does vary. I would say my Philips air fryer is louder than this Kasori brand. It's louder than a microwave, but definitely not as loud as a vacuum. And anytime you use it, you want to pull it out from the wall. Because that heat comes out of the back, if you had it really close to the wall, it could do some damage. It's not safe. So make sure you pull it out at least about five inches from the wall so it has plenty of space for circulation and doesn't hurt anything. Okay, there we go. It's done with a test run and it's hot. So all of this is hot. Up here's not hot. It's a little bit warm right here on the sides. It does say to not touch anything else except the basket. If you've been running for quite a while, all of this could be pretty hot. So there you go. The air fryer is clean. You did the test run. Now it's time to get cooking. So we're going to start simple. I've got a bag here of sweet potato fries. Sometimes you'll find directions for air fryer, but it doesn't matter. We don't need to have the bag tell us how to cook our fries. Now, depending on your make and model, it might recommend that you hit the preheat button. Now, some air fryers have a preheat button. Others don't. The Kasori brand does have a preheat. Now, some people say, why would you preheat? And then as soon as you pull the basket out, all the heat comes out. Well, it's still hot. So it's not, it's not going to let all this heat escape. There's still some benefit to preheating, but on my Philips air fryer, it didn't say anything about preheating and I rarely do. And my food turns out just fine. Usually what happens if I'm making two and three batches of something, those second and third batches will cook in a little shorter amount of time because the air fryer is already heated up. So just refer to your manual on the preheat. Some recipes will for sure tell you to do it, but a lot of times if I'm in a hurry, I just don't mess with it. Depending on what you make, you need to have some oil. If you've got like fatty chicken wings, things that already have that built in, you don't need to use any oil at all. But on other things, you do want to use some oil. You want to spray the basket, which keeps the food from sticking and the oil helps add to that crispiness. If you have seasoning on your food, oil is going to help the seasoning adhere to the food. Now, since having an air fryer, I've learned that these types of sprays with propellants not good for your air fryers. What people are reporting is that the nonstick coating starts to come off inside the air fryer. Now on my Philips that I've had for about a year, I haven't had that issue. So I'm not sure if that's just because of the brand or maybe the whole thing was a hoax, but I don't know. The Philips air fryer that I have is a lot more expensive, so it might be a better coating than some of these other ones. I'm not sure, but to play it safe, I bought myself an oil sprayer and instead of using the cans from the store, I just always use avocado oil in my cooking. And you can just use that instead, put it in the spritzer and then spray your air fryer with that. So I've got a 20 ounce bag of fries. It's only taking about half of the basket, so there's still plenty of room for that air to circulate. What I'm going to do is go ahead, give that another spray and I'm going to pop it in. I'm leaving this warning sticker on for my family just because this is a new air fryer and using it, I just want to make sure everybody's clear on what's hot and what's not. Now I usually just always use the manual button. The beauty of the air fryer is you can just kind of play around with it and see how it goes. So I'm going to go up to 400. Now I'm going to go for five minutes and we're just going to shake it up after five minutes and see how it's going. You might be wondering why I'm only doing 400 when it says to do 425 in the oven. I did the full bag. It's recommending 20-25 minutes for a full bag. My general rule of thumb is to go down anywhere from 10 to 25 degrees on any recipe and then I usually start by cutting the time in half and then adding. That's the beautiful thing about the air fryer is it's so easy to just add a few more minutes based on how the food is turning out. And again that instant read thermometer is so great to have on hand for meats so you can know exactly when your food is done cooking. So here's one little tip for using an air fryer. If you're cooking something that's going to require that you rotate, flip, shake, rather than setting it for the full amount of time, you could just set the timer for five to seven minute increments or whatever the half point is of the total baking time. That'll help you so you don't forget to come and rotate your food. I've been there, I've done that. This air fryer has a safety feature. You can either hit pause right there or you can just pull it open and it stops right away. So here it's been almost 12 minutes here and I shook midway. Just lost that footage there. But it's okay, you still get the good idea here. So shaking the food halfway through helps a ton. And look you can see it's not going to turn back on until I push this all the way in. Now it will finish its cycle. All right it is done. So this has been running for about 12 minutes now. This is basically where you get to decide. Do you want it more crispy? Go for it. Throw it in for some more. Otherwise it might be just perfect for you. That's the beauty of the air fryer. I'm going to give it another little spray. Go five more minutes. And there we go. We've got some sizzling toasty fries that really took 15 minutes to make. So the cooking instructions that say 20 to 25 minutes. This is fantastic. Plus my kitchen's not hot from turning on the oven. So we're not just going to buy an air fryer just to make fries. There's so many other things you can make. Next I'm going to show you how to make air fryer salmon. And I'll be using my Philips XXL. I just have a couple filets right here. They're thawed out. In an air fryer it's important to dry your food because if you have water in the food it's going to end up steaming your food instead of frying and crisping it. So just pat the salmon dry. And here is an air fryer tip. We're going to utilize the power of the foil sling. And all you want to do is just have some heavy duty foil. And you're just going to set it in the basket and create little handles so you can easily lift the food out. This is so much better than trying to scrape food out of the air fryer. So we're going to spray the foil on the inside of the basket. I'm just going to lightly season my salmon with salt and pepper. Next I got my Dijon mustard and honey mixture. This is just two parts honey, one part Dijon. I did about two tablespoons of honey, one tablespoon Dijon. And make sure it's mixed up good. And then just brush it on your salmon. And if you have the thicker filets you would want to brush the sides. And then if you have filets that have the skin on the bottom you wouldn't want to brush that. Now this one is thin enough that I can brush some on here. I'm just going to set those right there on top and we'll just brush in a little bit more glaze. Now you could probably fit, depending on your basket, you might be able to fit one more in there. Otherwise we've got this all set. So we're going to bake this at 400. And this recipe says 10 to 14 minutes, but because these are so much thinner I'm going to start with seven and take the temperature. The beautiful thing about air fryers is if you're just unsure about overcooking your food, you can pause it anytime. So this one's been going for about five minutes. And according to this it's done. But I do want to get some of that toastiness on there. So I'm going to just give it another minute and it is done right there. All of this is very hot. The basket's still hot. If you don't have a heat resistant countertop then don't set this on top either. I'm just going to show you how handy this foil sling is. And one other thing I love about air fryers is say you've had some fries sitting out for a little while. Throw it back in the air fryer for just a minute or two. Reheat and re-crisp those fries. They'll be as good as new. If you've got leftovers you want to reheat, just play with it. It's kind of like a microwave. Throw it in at 350 for three minutes. See if it needs it hotter. Unless you're going crazy high long on the temperature. Let me know which air fryer you have and which recipe you're going to try first. Be sure to check out this big list of air fryer recipes right here. I also have some air fryer desserts you have got to try. I'm here for you every Sunday morning and if this was helpful hit like and I will see you on the next video. Now I'm going to go enjoy some food.