If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably bought your first air fryer, so congratulations on that. Despite an air fryer works differently than a conventional oven, they have one common step in usage, and that is preheating.
Some people think preheating is just an optional step for an air fryer, but we strongly recommend that for the best outcome. Now the question is, how do you preheat an air fryer? By reading through our article, you’ll get to know. So let’s start—
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Why You Should Preheat Your Air Fryer
Many people think that their air fryer doesn’t need to be preheated. But that is a wrong step if you want to get the perfect result. Preheating ensures a superior cooking result since preheating ensures a perfect browning on the food.
Another reason for preheating your air fryer is cooking the dish faster. When you enter the dish in an already preheated air fryer, the dish starts to cook immediately. Usually, it takes a lot of time to heat up the inside of the fryer, so preheating does save you some time.
There are some foods that need to be cooked at a very high temperature for a very short time. So, putting them in a cold air fryer will actually affect the result dramatically. These types of dishes especially need preheating for cooking it correctly.
That is why you obviously need to preheat your air fryer before cooking your dishes. Although preheating brings a negative outcome in some cases, we will discuss that later. Still, preheating is the way to go.
How Do You Preheat Your Air Fryer
Preheating an air fryer isn’t that hard. You just have to know the appropriate time for it. Also, you must know the times when you shouldn’t preheat the air fryer. For starter, let’s see when you should preheat your air fryer—
Best Times To Preheat An Air Fryer
Preheating an air fryer is an important step for many air fryer recipes. Let’s see when you should preheat an air fryer—
Reheating Meals
Reheating leftover foods, lighter meals, and smaller frozen foods. This can make the food crisp & fast.
Nice Crust and Sear
If you just want food to be a good sear and have a crispy texture outside. Thinner meats can benefit from preheating, such as chicken fingers, lean pork ribs, or brisket. So if you want a nice grill or a crispy edge on steaks, you don’t want this in the center to be completely cooked.
To Cook The Perfect Steak
For you to get a great crust and sear, you need to have a preheated air fryer. This will quickly cook the outside of the steak as well and offer a rare or rare texture to a good medium. Pork chops may also benefit from a preheated air fryer in order to get the meat in the center of the crust and not too dry.
Frying Up Frozen Foods
Precooked frozen foods, such as frozen French fries, sticks of cheese, or sticks of fish. If the food is cooked already and you want to cook it hot, get a crispy outside.
Bad Times To Preheat An Air Fryer
Just like preheating an air fryer can be beneficial for some foods, it can be disadvantageous for some foods too. Let’s see when you should avoid preheating your air fryer—
Raw Thick Foods
Cooking very dense or dense/frozen meats such as roasts, large chicken breasts, or anything raw that needs to be cooked, while preheating is not required for the middle. You’ll be cooking the outside way too quickly and too crisp if you’re preheating until it cooks all the way to the center.
If you’re cooking fresh, thick, or frozen raw foods, this is evil. In the center, the beef, roast, or frozen core will still be raw. Think about this. Too heavy, too fast means you won’t cook raw food all the way through. In the case of steaks that you like to be rare or medium rare, this is the only exception.
Gentle Foods That You Don’t Want To Be Crunchy
Preheating can just make foods cook hotter and crisper on the outside. In cases where delicate or small cut vegetables are cooked, they can burn on the outside before they are tender inside.
In many situations, cooking too hot will dry out the food when preheated. So if you’re doing pre-heating, just reduce your cooking time a little.
Bread, Pastries, Cakes, Or Similar Items
You want to start in a cold air fryer while air frying fast bread or small cakes, so it can slowly heat or cook the bread/pastry. The outside will be baked too crispy by preheating and the inside will be doughy and raw.
The crust is going to be rough, while the interior dough is going to be raw. If you make pastries or cakes with smaller bite sizes, so when the air fryer is preheated, the inside will cook faster and not burn on the outside.
Don’t Preheat Your Air Fryer With Parchment Paper!
During pre-heat, the paper may blow around and will touch the heating device, causing it to burn. If you preheat and use parchment, after it is preheated, wait to bring the parchment in.
Now that you know the don’ts of preheating an air fryer, let’s proceed to learn how to preheat an air fryer—
How To Preheat An Air Fryer
There are even preheat functions in some air fryers, which you just press for the preheating process. How to do it easily if your model does not have this functionality:
Set the temperature at which the food is being cooked. Or at the temperature declared in the recipe.
Click “on” and quit for 3-5 minutes to heat the air fryer. For small air fryers lower than 3 qts, we suggest 2 minutes. And we say approximately 5 minutes for larger air fryers.
How Do You Know When The Air Fryer Is Preheated?
After following the procedure above, you will probably want to know if the air fryer has been properly heated. There are a couple of ways of verifying that. Open it first and put your hand close to it. You can feel the heat from the appliance coming out of it.
The baskets may also be carried out in order to feel their temperature. The baskets would be warm if the air fryer is preheated. You have to take into account that the appliance runs on electricity. So, with care, you should handle it.
Final Words
So that’s everything you should know about how do you preheat an air fryer. From now, preheating an air fryer won’t be a problem at all. If you want to cook some crisp & delicious food in the air fryer, make sure to preheat it! And if you’re yet to purchase an air fryer, just get it! Happy cooking!