Air Fryer-ing Follow-up

For those of you who had a chance to read my August 21st newsletter, you will remember my air-fryer saga and as promised you will find the rest of the story here. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, you can get caught up by reading it here.

Yes friends, I did indeed do some air frying in the past weeks and as with most kitchen appliances, there are some negatives and some positives.

I decided to try a few things that would normally require a fair amount of oil. One of the foods I chose to air fry was Jamaican fried dumplings. Fried dumplings are a staple in Jamaica and there is nothing even remotely healthy about this dish. It is basically dough fried in a lot of oil. I wanted to see if I could make it a little less unhealthy by using the air fryer.

The result is that the air fryer did a good job. I used one tablespoon of oil and watched as my dumplings rose beautifully and lightly golden. At the same time, I fried a batch on the stovetop in the usual one-half cup of oil. My husband did the taste testing as he loves Jamaican fried dumplings. The result was that the air-fried dumplings were just not as tasty as the ones fried in oil. No surprise there!

My takeaway is that if you do a lot of frying of foods, it is a good idea to use an air fryer for health reasons. I don’t do a lot of frying so I don’t think I will be keeping my air fryer. Also, I don’t like the design of this make (T-Fal) as the basket is round and sits on a spindle in the middle of the machine. This takes away a lot of the usable space for frying.

In the meantime, I will continue to do stovetop frying. As a compromise, I have decided to get a state-of-the-art non-stick fry pan that requires the use of very little oil.

P.S. I will be donating my air fryer to someone who will make good use of it but please don’t tell my mother-in-law.

Sending you all lots of love.