I did chicken tenders last night and they turned out great! Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside. For tenders, fry 5 minutes, then turn and 3-7 minutes til crisp.

For drumsticks and thighs, 20 minutes, then turn 8-12 minutes. This is after buttermilking and flouring. I just spray with some OO PAM.

They only want you to flip 1x.

I've had great results with fries, eggplant parm (also in reg oven, but the EP crisped up beautifully), Brussels sprouts, egg rolls, hassleback taters (microwave first, then crisp up in the AF), roasted taters, potato chips (you can only make a few at a time, but you don't need a lot!)

The book DH gave me along with my AF is 175 best Air Fryer Recipes by Camilla V. Saulsbury

I'm loving mine! First "fried food I've had in years! Nancy

1/4 teaspoon is about 3 drops. There is no way that can be drizzled, and even if you used a lot more oil, it must be sprayed to evenly distribute the oil. Try it again.

I think the big problem is that you started with too many adjustments. There was another thread here recently praising an air fryer so much it almost tempted me. :) The way it works is by blowing hot air, like a compact, powerful convection oven. Some have a stirring want for making chips. I can do the same thing in my wall oven and use tongs to stir. :)

The whole point of the air fryer rather than the wall oven is to be compact, and super easy and not tie up your oven (they were invented for making French fries in tiny European apartments where you're lucky to have more than two burners and there's no oven). By starting with the Todd English video, you put it back to difficult. The time for cooking chicken increases non-linearly with how big/thick the pieces are. That's why "fryer" sized chickens are supposed to be small.

Try it again with some French fries or sliced potatoes, some breaded tenders or strips, and other smaller things that people report success with. Get some successes of your own under your belt and learn how the machine work. Follow some recipes exactly, not just method, but exact size and quanity of the exact food recommended. And when it says spray with oil, spray with oil. There are some cans of oil spray that have pure oil (and therefore you must check them to make sure they don't go rancid in the cupboard), and there are some pump sprayers you can put your own oil in that work pretty well for awhile, though they tend to wear out too fast.

Once you've mastered the stuff everyone else is doing, you'll have enough knowledge and experience with the machine that you should be able to adapt your own recipes and borrow methods from videos. The view is a heck of a lot better from the top of the learning curve!

I've been toying with buying an air fryer, so I was interested in this thread. I have no idea what Todd English recommended, but pals on a low sodium Facebook group have documented their many positive experiences.

Plllog gave some good advice. As far as the tastiness, the egg, flour, and even breadcrumbs should have been seasoned in advance. As far as the oil drizzle, I agree that 1/4 tsp would not be enough. Spraying distributes the oil better. In baking crumbed items in my convection oven, I've found that adding a bit of oil to the crumbs before the dredging does an even better job. Spraying oil also sprays the crumbs everywhere. Using a little bit of oil is not a problem. You're still getting away from overly greasy, deep fried foods.

I have a countertop NuWave convection oven that works on the same basic principle as the air fryers. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are cooked at about 360 for 20 minutes. As Plllog mentioned, if the breasts are huge, they'll obviously take longer.

You might want to join a Facebook group dedicated to air fryers just to get some ideas from people who use them all the time. As I mentioned before, the folks on the low sodium Facebook group really like them. Just the other day I noticed an air fryer on one of the back counters in my bank. When I asked the tellers about it, they all starting gushing about how wonderful it is. So I think it's probably a good appliance for a lot of people.

Its a lot faster, safer, and easier for me to cook in the Air Fryer. I can't say what your issue is - but I don't do all that seasoning, either. I'm diabetic. I use the air fryer to AVOID all those carbs in breading!

Surface area matters with an air fryer. I love my Phillips, but the basket is TINY when evaluated for surface area. In order to even half fill it you have to continually toss/stir the contents. All those pictures of crispy fries poking out of the top of the basket are LIES!

I'm looking in to the Gowise 12.7 qt air fryer "oven". It has 3 trays/shelves - lots more surface area. I am able to cook without any attention whatsoever in my Phillips, as long as I don't put much in it. Burgers, pork chops, egg rolls, wings, whatever, as long as I don't have more than one layer on the bottom I can cook and ignore.

With the Gowise 12.7 qt air fryer "oven" I'm hoping the additional surface area provided will allow me to cook larger batches at once without having to muck about with the stirring/tossing nonsense, or having to make multiple batches.

Chicken breasts these days are GINORMOUS. My guess is that they were too big for the air fryer to be able to handle well. If you try again either get smaller breasts to start with, or stick with tenders, or cut the breasts in half to make them thinner.

And BTW - convection ovens are NOT THE SAME as air fryers. Air frying is different. I hate convection ovens. I LOVE MY AIR FRYER! I get better wings out of my air fryer than I've been able to get "out" for years now. Nobody double fries them any more so they're always soggy. They come out better than double fried in my Phillips Air Fryer.

I get a quart of buttermilk and freeze in a muffin pan (spray with PAM first) I'll take out 2 "pucks" to do 4 pieces. Dunk in the BM, then either panko or, some whole grain bread zipped up in a food processor. Spray with PAM or they have some good OO sprayers (The misters that you add your own OO have always clogged on me) Don't be stingy, the amount of oil you are actually using is very small!

I use all of my favorite seasonings, usually a mixture of herbs from my garden + some garlic.... 20 min one side, spray the other side and about 15 min on that side.

You have to go with the flow and use the recipes as a guide.

Your airfryer is probably not to blame, you should try find some recipes for cooking food in them and follow the recipe. My airfryer is great, food is great and i have no complaints. You can check out some Air fryers on airgrub.com and learn some things about them. Maybe the model you have is not good, or maybe it cooks food well only when it's half full, there are different models and on that website you have everything explained. There are pros and cons of every model and detailed review of how it works. When you get the right model you will love it, they make some delicious and healthy food.

What questions do you have?

I love my air fryer.

Here is the discussion we had about two weeks ago:

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5887010/air-fryer-question#n=30

I still keep trying to love it and I still don't. I made some frozen calamari rings that I dug out of the freezer and they turned out well. I tried to make baked potatoes and that was pretty bad, they were not done in the middle and far too crunchy on the outside. Well, I guess that means they were crunchy all the way through, LOL.

As before, the only thing I've made so far that came out better than it would by just putting it in the oven is the "fried chicken", which actually does come out pretty nice and crunchy. Of course, I don't eat chicken skin, so I pull that all off, but Elery LOVES it.

That said, it takes a lot less power to run the air fryer than my big electric oven(s). If I'm making roasted vegetables, though, I'm going to make a whole sheet pan and toss the chicken in with that. Grandma always told me to "never bake an orphan" so I never put one thing in the oven, I fill that oven up, LOL.

So for me it's a constant balancing act, does the savings in electricity balance the sub par results I sometimes get using the air fryer instead? And I keep getting sucked in by "15 recipes you HAVE to try in the air fryer", and so I keep trying. It's a pain to clean though, if I make anything messy.

Annie

I love mine and use it a lot. seldom turn on the big oven - maybe 3-4 times a year. the Blue Jean Chef has an AF cookbook but check out her website where you can find her recipes. she also has an online cooking class once a week but I forget what day - maybe Thurs. it should be posted on her website.