AirFryday: Four ways with pork snacks, air fryer style

Let’s start with a taste of the results of our four-judges panel: One of the four products won hands down, with all four of us independently voting it the best of the four. The big surprise, given that these are Eskort pork products?

It wasn’t the sausages.

The four of us are people who know our food. Karoo food and preserves queen Heyla Meyer, chefs academy trained Cowboy Billy, your Food Editor (c’est moi), and Diane Cassere, aka The Foodie’s Wife, who has sighed and grumped her way through a thousand chefs’ tables, which is a qualification not to be sniffed at.

But first, some background:

When I first started this AirFryday thing a year and a half ago, many food products had no air fryer instructions at all. Things have changed dramatically, and this latest product launch sees the air fryer instructions take top spot on the back of the packaging. This seems to suggest that this manufacturer, at least, regards the air fryer as having come of age in the kitchen appliance popularity stakes.

I cooked all four products this week when the palate posse came around for a meeting to plan our forthcoming Christmas in July dinner, an outing of our occasional Cradock Dinner Club pop-ups. There were four of us, and there was plenty of food to go around.

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It was interesting to note which items were more popular with whom. For me, top spot was shared in a tie by the sticky Asian pork belly cubes and the sage-infused pork sausages, followed by the mini frikkadels and cheesy pork schnitzels.

Both Billy and Di voted 1) belly cubes, 2) sage-infused sausages, 3) frikkadels, and 4) cheesy pork schnitzels; almost identical to my choices, though I tied the first pair.

For Heyla, the pork belly cubes were also number 1, but in second place were the schnitzels, followed by the sausages in third place, and in fourth the frikkadels.

So that’s a resounding win for (full title) Eskort Sticky Asian Pork Belly Cubes with sweet soy and ginger glaze. They’re spicy and sweet, very “Chinese” in style, and would be perfect served with noodles. What I liked is that there was no bone, so they really are “bites”. You literally could pick them up with your fingers. Okay I did.

The second-ranked choice, overall, was the (full title) Sage-infused Sausages with caramelised onion sauce, which tasted good but was over starched. They’re 75% pork, and all sorts of things with E-numbers and the like that are best not thought about too much. In a sachet was a proper brown onion sauce, so you could serve these with mash and feel like you were down at the Skop en Donner.

The (overall) third-placed (full title) Mini Frikkadels with arrabiata sauce were really nifty. We all enjoyed them, so by ranking them we are not relegating the also-rans to loser status. The combination of the cute little frikkadels with that tangy tomato sauce was perfect. I’d serve them with pasta for a quick weeknight supper.

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I even enjoyed the (full title) Cheesy Pork Schnitzels with mature cheddar cheese sauce. Schnitzels are not my thing, but believe me they are on every small town menu, even though city eateries left them behind decades ago. I have eaten really bad schnitzels in the platteland, but these were much better than most. The meat was perfectly tender and cooked through, and the crumb had a nice crackle and stayed intact in the air fryer.

Which brings us to those air fryer package instructions. Some were perfectly on the money. Others, not so much. Especially the frikkadels. The instructions are clear: “Place the tray with the frikkadels and sauce in the air fryer and cook at 180° for 12-15 minutes, toss after 10 minutes, serve immediately.”

But first, let’s step back. A day earlier, after having been unsure whether to defrost everything or not, I sent an email to Eskort and was told in reply that they were to be cooked from frozen. From the freezer, into the air fryer.

This is what I did with the frikkadels, freezer to air fryer, preheated to 180°, cooked for 15 minutes. In their foil dish, as directed. The meatballs in the centre of the foil tray, after 15 minutes at 180°C, were still half-frozen. They went in at 200° for another 10 minutes, and by then they were perfect. This is not a big fat whinge: machines have their foibles. But, always when cooking in an air fryer, they’re done when they’re done, not when the recipe says so. This applies to all cooking, in any vessel. We’re all different, and so are pots, pats, ovens and air fryers.

The sage-infused sausages are just what you want from an Eskort pork sausage, with just a hint of more. They were to be cooked at 180° for 8 minutes, turned and cooked for 5 minutes more, then covered with sauce for a final 5 minutes. I chose not to add the sauce, but to heat it separately. After the recommended cooking time of a total of 19 minutes, they were perfectly well done, but a tad vanilla in hue. I wanted them to have more colour, so I gave them 3 minutes more at 205°C. Perfect.

Both the pork schnitzels and the belly cubes turned out just right when cooked to the package directions. I will be buying both the belly cubes and the sage-infused sausages again, and I’m pretty sure Billy will be telling his canoe club mates about them. 😅 DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

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