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Unlock Your Air-Fryer's Potential!

Plus: how to get rid of fatigue, using science

Author

The 10almonds Team
April 22, 2023

Optimist n. 1: someone who figures out that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s more like a cha-cha!

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • If you’re feeling tired, opening your eyes and looking upwards (even without blue/white light) for 30 seconds will cue your brain to release wake-up chemicals

    • Air-fryers don’t just mean fewer calories, but also less acrylamide

      • If you’re struggling to add “just a tiny bit of oil” and make it work, spraying the oil on (and packing the compartment less) work wonders.

      • We also have an extra oil-adding hack that’s too wordy for this 30-second summary, so you can find that in our main feature!

  • Another benefit of air-frying is that you can season the food without any of it floating away in a sea of grease

    • We also have recommendations for particularly healthful seasonings that you can and should use daily if possible (garlic, black pepper, turmeric, cinnamon—probably not all on the same food, although that can work with some Desi foods!)

  • Air-frying goes way beyond fries… See our suggestions at the bottom of our main feature!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Andrew Huberman: "How To Get Rid of Fatigue Using Science!" – You won't believe until you try!

The trick is: open your eyes and look upwards for 30 seconds; this cues the locus coeruleus to hose the rest of your brain with norepinephrine because this neurological tilt-switch is part of the brain’s way of knowing when it’s time to wake up!

Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman explains:

🍽 MAIN FEATURE

Unlock Your Air-Fryer’s Potential!

You know what they say:

“you get out of it what you put in”

…and in the case of an air-fryer, that’s very true!

More seriously:

A lot of people buy an air fryer for its health benefits and convenience, make fries a couple of times, and then mostly let it gather dust. But for those who want to unlock its potential, there’s plenty more it can do!

Let’s go over the basics first…

Isn’t it just a tiny convection oven?

Mechanically, yes. But the reason that it can be used to “air-fry” food rather than merely bake or roast the food is because of its tiny size allowing for much more rapid cooking at high temperatures.

On which note… If you’re shopping for an air-fryer:

  • First of all, congratulations! You’re going to love it.

  • Secondly: bigger is not better. If you go over more than about 4 liters capacity, then you don’t have an air-fryer; you have a convection oven. Which is great and all, but probably not what you wanted.

Are there health benefits beyond using less oil?

It also creates much less acrylamide than deep-frying starchy foods does. The jury is out on the health risks of acrylamide, but we can say with confidence: it’s not exactly a health food.

I tried it, but the food doesn’t cook or just burns!

The usual reason for this is either over-packing the fryer compartment (air needs to be able to circulate!), or not coating the contents in oil. The oil only needs to be a super-thin layer, but it does need to be there, or else again, you’re just baking things.

Two ways to get a super thin layer of oil on your food:

  • (works for anything you can air-fry) spray the food with oil. You can buy spray-on oils at the grocery store (Fry-light and similar brands are great), or put oil in little spray bottle (of the kind that you might buy for haircare) yourself.

  • (works with anything that can be shaken vigorously without harming it, e.g. root vegetables) chop the food, and put it in a tub (or a pan with a lid) with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Don’t worry if that looks like it’s not nearly enough—it will be! Now’s a great time to add your seasonings* too, by the way. Put the lid on, and holding the lid firmly in place, shake the tub/pan/whatever vigorously. Open it, and you’ll find the oil has now distributed itself into a very thin layer all over the food.

*About those seasonings…

Obviously not everything will go with everything, but some very healthful seasonings to consider adding are:

Garlic and black pepper can go with almost anything (and in this writer’s house, they usually do!)

Turmeric has a sweet nutty taste, and will add its color anything it touches. So if you want beautiful golden fries, perfect! If you don’t want yellow eggplant, maybe skip it.

Cinnamon is, of course, great as part of breakfast and dessert dishes

On which note, things most people don’t think of air-frying:

  • Breakfast frittata—the healthy way!

  • Omelets—no more accidental scrambled egg and you don’t have to babysit it! Just take out the tray that things normally sit on, and build it directly onto the (spray-oiled) bottom of the air-fryer pan. If you’re worried it’ll burn: a) it won’t, because the heat is coming from above, not below b) you can always use greaseproof paper or even a small heatproof plate

  • French toast—again with no cooking skills required

  • Fish cakes—make the patties as normal, spray-oil and lightly bread them

  • Cauliflower bites—spray oil or do the pan-jiggle we described; for seasonings, we recommend adding smoked paprika and, if you like heat, your preferred kind of hot pepper! These are delicious, and an amazing healthy snack that feels like junk food.

  • Falafel—make the balls as usual, spray-oil (do not jiggle violently; they won’t have the structural integrity for that) and air-fry!

  • Calamari (vegan option: onion rings!)—cut the squid (or onions) into rings, and lightly coat in batter and refrigerate for about an hour before air-frying at the highest heat your fryer does. This is critical, because air-fryers don’t like wet things, and if you don’t refrigerate it and then use a high heat, the batter will just drip, and you don’t want that. But with those two tips, it’ll work just great.

Want more ideas?

Check out EatingWell’s 65+ Healthy Air-Fryer Recipes ← the recipes are right there, no need to fight one’s way to them in any fashion!

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Kitchen Prescription: Revolutionize your gut health with 101 simple, nutritious and delicious recipes

One of the biggest challenges facing anyone learning to cook more healthily, is keeping it tasty. What to cook when your biggest comfort foods all contain things you "should" avoid?

Happily for us, Dr. Ahmed is here with a focus on comfort food that's good for your gut health. It's incidentally equally good for the heart and good against diabetes... but Dr. Ahmed is a gastroenterologist, so that's where she's coming from with these.

There's a wide range of 101 recipes here, including many tagged vegetarian, vegan, and/or gluten-free, as appropriate.

While this is not a vegetarian cookbook, Dr. Ahmed does consider the key components of a good diet to be, in order of quantity that should be consumed:

  1. Fruits and vegetables

  2. Whole grains

  3. Legumes

  4. Pulses

  5. Nuts and seeds

...and as such, the recipes are mostly plant-based.

The recipes are from all around the world, and/but the ingredients are mostly things that are almost universal. In the event that something might be hard-to-get, she suggests an appropriate substitution.

The recipes are straightforward and clear, as well as being beautifully illustrated.

All in all, a fine addition to anyone's kitchen!

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Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

The 10almonds Team