The Fine Dining Experiment
An air fryer is often used for side dishes. Potato dishes or bread are not uncommon. But even simple cakes are possible in an air fryer. But can difficult dishes also be prepared in an air fryer? We're daring an experiment and cooking a fancy three-course meal from fine dining cuisine in the air fryer. The challenge: We use only and exclusively the air fryer and nothing else. The entire experiment is available here as a video.
The Appetizer
We use the double basket in the air fryer and separate it for flexible use. Of course, it's also possible to use the basket as a whole. For our appetizer, we need: bell pepper, eggplant, and garlic.
First, we place our bell pepper, eggplant, and garlic in one chamber of the air fryer. But we leave them whole. We want to give our vegetables a strong roasted aroma first. This means we want to grill everything until it's black.
Our garlic is ready after 20 minutes at 200 °C, and our eggplant also looks very good. The bell pepper needs a little more time. So, while we let the bell pepper cook a little longer, we peel the eggplant and put it back with the bell pepper for a few extra roasted aromas.
Now we also peel the garlic. It's ready now. You can tell by how easily you can mash the garlic because it's so soft. Once we've removed the skin, we cut the garlic into very fine pieces.
We cut the eggplant into fine cubes. In total, the eggplant now needs 25 minutes at 200 °C. We peel the bell pepper, remove the seeds, and also cut it into small pieces. By the way, it cooks for a total of 35 minutes at 200 °C.
We mix our vegetables and salt them. We put our yogurt with the garlic in a bowl. Salt it and mix everything. Finally, we arrange our grilled vegetables on a plate and garnish them with the yogurt. And just like that, our air-fried appetizer is ready.
The Main Course
For our main course, we are using our high-quality Label Rouge duck breast. If you want to know why our poultry is so special, click here. We visited our producers on-site and closely observed how the poultry is raised. As soon as we have placed our ingredients in the air fryer, we can simply start the air fryer.
Now we peel our potatoes and put them in a bowl. Afterwards, we wash the potatoes. Then we slice our potatoes into thin pieces. This is important because we want optimal heat exposure on the potato slices later. If the slices were too thick, it could negatively affect our endeavor.
We layer our potato slices on baking paper. Then we take a pepperoni-basil pesto and spread it over our potatoes. Then we place another layer of potatoes over the pesto and repeat the process. Now, with the help of the baking paper, we roll the potatoes into a kind of roulade. We place the potatoes in the air fryer at 180 °C for 45 minutes.
Our duck breast is now ready for the next step. We need to score the surface with a knife. This ensures that the skin can become crispy, as it allows the fat to render more easily. The duck breast cooks for 70 minutes with the drying function at 55 °C in the air fryer, before we crisp it up for 5 minutes at 205 °C.
We cut our potato roulade into bite-sized pieces and slice the duck breast. Then we arrange everything on a plate. And just like that, we have our refined main course from an air fryer.
The Dessert
We want to make lava cakes. So we take 200g of chocolate and chop it into fine pieces. Then we mix this with our melted butter and put everything in the air fryer. The chocolate should also melt. Luckily, that doesn't take too long. Now we crack 4 eggs and put them in a bowl. Add 100g of sugar and one packet of vanilla sugar, plus a pinch of salt.
We mix everything with a mixer and pour our melted chocolate into the bowl. Finally, we add 80g of flour and mix the ingredients into a batter. Now we fill the batter into small muffin molds. We should get at least 6 in total. We even get 9.
Now we put our Lava Cakes in the Airfryer and wait a little. We use the baking function and let the small cakes bake for 10 minutes at 160°C in the hot air fryer. A super delicious dessert, very simply from the Airfryer.
The Conclusion
It is indeed possible to prepare a three-course meal in an air fryer. Appetizers, main courses, and desserts turn out excellently with the right settings. The air fryer can perfectly mimic grilled vegetables and also achieve the perfect cooking point for meat. Complex side dishes also work well. Furthermore, it is very easy to create a dessert in the air fryer, which can sometimes be difficult even in a conventional oven. All in all, the experiment was a success and the recipes work. We can therefore advise everyone to try it out too.
