Whatever flour breading you’re making, whether plain or classic – the mixture of flour and a dozen other dry or wet ingredients including seasonings, there’s always a place for it in the air fryer. Keep reading to discover exactly how to use breading in the air fryer appliance.
Can you use flour in the air fryer? You can use flour in the air fryer. Use it to coat (or as part of a standard breading, obviously with a second and third ingredient such as egg, cornmeal, and crumbs), on poultry parts such as wings, drumsticks and breasts.
This will produce an exterior that is super crispy to chew on, and, depending on other ingredients, produce an exterior that is perfectly browned and also just in place for an all moisture seal. The result is a juicy and tender masterpiece!
When using plain flour in the air fryer to coat food items, it’s usually as easy as tossing the item in flour and then popping into the air fryer, and then a dozen minutes or half way through cooking, spraying on some specific flour spots that might have developed around the item in order to get it all even and nicely crisped up.
If you’re trying a standard breading procedure which normally incorporates flour on the fried item first, then a few other ingredients such as egg and crumbs all over it, then there’s actually no need for spraying any flour spots as they would hardly even form.
You just want to be extra careful not use too much flour otherwise, you’ll end up tasting it far more than the breading or the food itself.
For the standard breading procedure, just go ahead and drizzled lightly with some oil (prior to popping into the air fryer), and then cook halfway, then turn, then the other half, and that’s it.
Note that whichever method you end up using whether the plain breading or classic breading, you still have to turn the food the other way round manually (using a tong) and not shake using the basket.
If you don’t spray with cooking oil such as vegetable or canola oil when using plain flour and nothing else, you’ll get those little floury spots all over the item which tastes exactly as you’d expect, plain flour!
Sometimes, there’ll still be flour on the cooked item even after drizzling with some bit of olive oil half way during cooking, but this can easily be avoided by lightly coating the item with oil just before placing into the air fryer.
If you happen to have some flour residue still left on the item, then, it’s no magic, you’re using too much flour!
You should consider using less, and also shaking off excess flour after tossing the food item into the breading mixture.
A good idea would be to let the coated item sit for additional 15 minutes (preferable in the refrigerator) so as to let the flour soak in a bit more to create a flour-free item after air frying.
Additionally, when using flour as a coating on baked items, it’s always a good practice to use a liner underneath such as parchment paper in order to catch all fall offs.
You don’t want them going through your basket and then down to the base of the fryer which can accumulate and form into grime and gunk with time.
To further minimize any fall offs, and this applies strictly to poultry parts, you want to consider keeping the skin of the poultry part intact as this medium helps the flour to stick to the surface more easily than if it was completely skinless.
Besides, this has the added advantage of locking in moisture and juice and therefore tenderizing the part. You can always discard the skin portion after, if you’re not really a fan.
