Easy and delicious air fryer dishes including Biscoff tarts and jerk chicken

With soaring energy bills sending cost of living rising every higher, more and more people are seeking out lower-energy alternatives for preparing their food. Enter the air fryer! This year’s must-have kitchen gadget uses 80% less energy and cooks meals up to twice as fast, making it the perfect low-energy alternative to traditional ovens.

Air fryers are simple to use and are not just for making chips in! You can create an array of delicious, healthy meals, desserts and cakes for all the family and Clare Andrews’ new book The Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook will show you how.

It’s packed with 80 tasty and accessible recipes and contains invaluable advice on the different types of air fryer on the market, as well as how to use and maintain them. Here are just some of our favourite recipes from the air fryer guru’s book…

Biscoff and strawberry tarts

Ingredients / Serves 4

• 1 x 270g pack filo pastry sheets
• 4 tbsp Biscoff spread
• 200g strawberries, hulled and quartered
• Icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. Carefully unroll your filo pastry and tear each sheet into 6–8 even squares. You don’t need to be too neat with these as they will be layered up in your silicone moulds.
2. Once your pastry is prepared, start to layer the filo sheets into your silicone cupcake cases like nests.
3. Layer 3–4 sheets in each case. Add a teaspoon of Biscoff to the base of each filo cup, then transfer to the air fryer and cook at 180°C for 10 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden.
4. Once the tart cases are cooked, simply top with the chopped strawberries, dust with a little icing sugar and serve.

Goat’s cheese and caramelised onion tarts

Ingredients / Make 4-6

• 1 sheet pre-rolled puff pastry
• 1 jar caramelised onion chutney or marmalade
• 1 log soft goat’s cheese (around 125g), crumbled
• 1 egg, beaten
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• salad leaves and balsamic glaze, to serve (optional)

Method

1. Unroll the puff pastry sheet on its baking-paper backing and stamp out small rounds using a 9 cm round cutter, rerolling and cutting any scraps of pastry until it is all used up.
2. Press the puff pastry rounds into the silicone cupcake cases so that edges of the pastry come up the sides of the cases.
3. Put a teaspoon of the caramelised onion mixture in the base of each of the pastry-filled cases, then top with a layer of crumbled goat’s cheese.
4. Repeat the layers twice so that each tart has three layers of onion and three layers of goat’s cheese.
5. Transfer the filled cases to the air fryer and cook at 180°C for 8–10 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and the cheese is golden and bubbling.
6. Transfer the tarts to a serving platter or individual plates and serve hot, with salad and balsamic glaze alongside, if you like.

Jerk chicken drumsticks

Ingredients / Serves 4

• 8 chicken drumsticks

For the jerk sauce:

• 3 small red chillies, roughly chopped
• 1 small red onion, roughly chopped
• 4 spring onions, roughly chopped
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• juice of 1 lime
• ½ tsp ground allspice
• 1 tsp runny honey
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Make the jerk sauce by putting all of the ingredients in a blender or smoothie maker and blending to a smooth paste. If the mixture is too thick and doesn’t blend, add a little more oil to loosen slightly.
2. Lay the chicken drumsticks in the base of a lidded container, then pour over the sauce and rub into the chicken to ensure everything is well coated. Cover with a lid and transfer to the fridge to marinate, ideally overnight.
3. Once the chicken is marinated, lay it in the base of the air fryer in a single layer (you may need to do this in batches, depending on the size of your fryer) and cook at 180°C for 20– 25 minutes, turning the drumsticks halfway through cooking time, until the meat is tender and the juices and run clear.
4. Serve hot. These are wonderful to serve alongside salads and slaws, or with rice and peas for a true taste of the Caribbean sunshine.

The Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook by Clare Andrews (Penguin Michael Joseph, £20) is out now.

Photos: Miriam Smith for Author Photos / Danielle Woods for Recipe Photos

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