Episode 15
Hello and welcome to this episode of The Beyond Nourished Podcast. I am your host Rachelle Girardin, and this is the place where you can learn to become a better, more efficient health-focused cook in just 10 minutes or less.
I first wanted to say a very large thank you for all of the messages that poured in from last week's episode where I decided to share my health journey due to some listener requests. It's never easy to share openly, but I have learned along the way that sharing from a place of vulnerability and just from the heart without any shame always seems to benefit people and allow people to see more clearly who you are and why you're passionate about what you do. So thank you to everybody who sent messages, and if you didn't get a chance to listen to that episode, go back and give it a listen. It is a little bit longer than 10 minutes, but I do my best to get my point across in no time flat.
As promised, this week we are back to our regularly scheduled programming, and we are talking about one of my favorite topics: the air fryer. But more importantly, how to cook meat in the air fryer or what meat is best cooked in the air fryer.
When it comes to using your air fryer - number one, if you haven't purchased one yet, you're going to want to go back to a few episodes ago where I talked about which air fryer is best to use and why.
When it comes to cooking meat, you want to concentrate on cooking portions that are four portions or less in your air fryer - assuming that you got an XL version, which is pretty much the biggest size of air fryer that you can buy. XL sounds huge, but it's not. It typically will only serve two to four people in the basket without having to do many, many batches of things.
So when cooking meat, remember that if you're cooking for six or eight people, that this might not be the best option to use. You might want to use your oven instead, or you can work in batches, which, when it comes to meat and eating it fresh, I'm not sure that that's the best idea, but it is something that you can do. For example, when making meatballs, you might want to meal prep them which would be a fine solution for that predicament.
Here are a couple of things to note. Number one, I love cooking my meat in the air fryer, again, when I am cooking four portions or less. The types of meat that I love to cook in it, and what I found great success in is cooking chicken breasts. Chicken breasts - with the skin on or skin off - chicken legs, and drumsticks.
I love cooking fish in the air fryer as well as meatballs, and I've also even done steak. In the case of steak, you can do something called a reverse sear. So you can take one or two pieces of steak, cook them to temperature in the air fryer, and then do a reverse sear afterwards. This is where you take a really hot cast iron pan and season your meat, heat it up, season your meat again and then just sear it off before you eat it so that the internal temperature is as you want it - whether it be medium rare, medium or whatever else, and then you just simply sear the external outside and you eat it just after that.
There's a lot less resting time in this phase as well, because the meat basically has a chance to do that in the process of going from cooking it in the oven or in the air fryer and then to eating it. So it's kind of a fun way to cook your steak if you've never done that before.
I love cooking meatballs in the air fryer because all of the juices and any excess fat also drips off into the basin in the bottom. Everything from turkey, greek-style meatballs to traditional beef meatballs. I love it. You simply just need to grease the underlayer of your air fryer basket and check it about half way through. Make sure you give them a little shake so that they are cooking all the way through and having a nice browning to the top. Meatballs are so wonderful in the air fryer!
Another animal protein that I love cooking in the air fryer is fish. Now with fish, you have to be a little bit more careful. Typically, a lot of the fish that we do from a meal prep perspective is going to be marinated in something. The trick to this is to make sure that you still have some of that liquid and that it's not falling to the bottom of the basket. The best way to do this is to put a piece of parchment paper underneath anything that you're cooking that has a marinade or anything crummy on the outside - like a coating of corn flakes or something like that - because it just allows you to catch whatever is on the bottom and you don't have to worry about sacrificing crispiness.
About halfway through your cooking process, you can just remove that parchment paper and either turn the piece over or even just leave it as is, and that will re-crisp that up if you're looking for a crispy exterior. Otherwise, it will just dry it out a little bit so that you're not losing all of that flavor. Especially in the case of a fish, if you're doing something with a marinade, one of my favorite things is a black cod with a miso marinade. It's a Nobu recipe and wow - it's so fantastic. And this way you still get all of that flavor, so it's really yummy.
When it comes to chicken - this is by far the animal protein that I cook the most in the air fryer - whether it be breast, thighs, anything! I love cooking things with skin on them too, because it gets so crispy and delicious, and then also a lot of that fat is also running off, which is slightly beneficial if you're watching some calories or you just don't like having excess fat in your meals but you like a crispy skin or you like to seal in the moisture and maybe still discard the skin.
I truly love cooking chicken this way. One of the things to note though is that when it comes to getting this right, make sure that you have a good meat thermometer. We talked about this a few episodes ago - make sure that you have a Thermapen. If you don't have one, they are the best meat thermometers that you can get out there. They're so accurate.
When it comes to starting to work with the air fryer and cooking meat proteins this way versus in the oven, you want to make sure of a couple of things. First of all, watch your temperature. You need to make sure that for whatever end result you're trying to achieve - let's say you're trying to achieve something really crispy - that you have a high enough temperature, like 400 degrees Fahrenheit in your air fryer.
You want to make sure that you preheat your air fryer. If you don't preheat your air fryer, just remember that your first batch is going to take longer than usual. Let's say you're doing two batches of something and you cook the first one without pre-heating it, and then the second one you just throw in right after. That second batch is going to cook a lot quicker. Just remember, timing-wise, you want to check things often when you're just getting your bearings and using the air fryer because things cook very quickly! Time is greatly reduced in that small area of the convection of an air fryer, so just make sure that you check often and that you rotate things, and move things around so that they're not overlapping. Cook times are reduced drastically, so it's one of the reasons that I love using the air fryer because not only do I get to save the energy of using my entire stove, but I also get to do it in a fraction of time!
I hope that these tips are helpful to you and help you conquer cooking meat in the air fryer like a pro!
Please let me know if you have any questions. The best way to connect with me is on Instagram @cookwithbeyondnourished or @beyondnourished.
I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode and I look forward to sharing more episodes like this in the future. Stay tuned!