10.182

6 (Sat) July 2019

Deep-Fried v Air-Fried Breaded Flounder Fillets

2.25

by me

at home

-Dasmariñas Village, Makati, Manila, Philippines-

solo

The winner: deep frying – hands down.  After just a couple minutes on each side, the fillet was nicely crisp on the outside, flaky and moist within.

Air frying, on the other hand, made it limp and and soggy, even after 20 minutes on the highest setting.  As a further experiment, I reset the timer twice more, for a total cooking time of 60 minutes, at which point the outside did achieve an acceptable level of crispiness but the inside had become horribly dried out.

Again, the air-fryer doesn’t work at all as a fryer (see for example 8.030 Air-Fried Wings), but can be useful as a quick convection oven (see for example 10.167 Pan-Seared/Air-Fried Steak).