AirFryday: T-bone steak, egg and chips in your air fryer

Steak, eggs and chips has been one of my family’s three favourite meals for generations, along with roast chicken and roast leg of lamb. I suspect this makes our tastes fairly typical.

I opened a cupboard the other day and my eye fell on something I hadn’t noticed in years — my mother’s chip pan. Deep and wide, still shiny in its aluminium sturdiness, the sight of it gave me a bit of a moment. My mom left this world in 1995, and it’s hard to grasp that that was 30 years ago and that she’d be turning 100 this December.

And then my eye shifted to the air fryers on a countertop nearby, and my mind flipped to how I cook chips today. In an air fryer. Every time. I haven’t deep-fried them in a pot of bubbling oil for about two years.

Many people in the world now know my mom’s chips as Granny Betty’s Air Fryer Chips. And the point there is that I devised a sort of mirror image of my mom’s way with chips (which is very particular) and found a way to (kind of) replicate her method in a device which had not been invented when she died.

Now, one thing I am never going to try to fry in an air fryer is an egg. So, the chips part of this recipe for steak, eggs and chips can be cooked in an air fryer, as can the steak, but get those eggs into a pan on the stove, in butter, as soon as the chips are done and the steaks are resting.

The steak, this time, was a T-bone, which is part sirloin and a strip of fillet on the other side of the bone. Because of this, T-bone is not well suited to being cooked well done. The fillet section cooks quickly, and it would be a shame to turn it out overdone and dry. Ideally, medium rare or perhaps medium is best for this kind of steak.

Regarding the weight of these steaks: they’re 750g each. But about 20% of that is the bone, so the meat here is about 600g apiece. That’s quite a lot, but how often do you eat a T-bone? 

Meanwhile, you can make your choice of sauce if you like — pepper, mushrooms, whatever you like. Or you could just pour the pan juices over.

Pan juices? But it’s been cooked in an air fryer…?

Ah. Well, when your steaks are ready, put them on a plate to rest and lift out that rack. Guess what — there are pan juices that have dripped down there. Who knew… and why waste them? Now step back a little — you melted butter earlier to baste the steaks with. Now add the pan juices to that and you know what to do next…

Tony’s T-bone steak, eggs and chips

(Serves 2)

Ingredients

2 x 750g T-bone steaks

3 Tbsp butter for the steak and more as needed for frying the eggs

1 Tbsp canola oil

1 tsp garlic powder

Salt and black pepper to taste, for the steaks, and more for the eggs

3 large potatoes, washed, dried, peeled and sliced into chips, then patted dry again (see linked recipe)

Salt for the chips

4 Tbsp canola oil for the chips

Method

If, like most people, you own one air fryer, cook the chips first and keep them to one side while you cook the steaks. When the steaks are done and you’ve fried the eggs, give the basket a rinse, and put the chips back in the air fryer for 2 or 3 minutes to heat and crisp again. Follow my recipe for Granny Betty’s air fryer chips.

For the steaks: In a small pan, melt 3 Tbsp butter and add 1 Tbsp canola oil. Season with salt and black pepper and stir in the garlic powder. Brush this on both sides of the steaks. Leave the remainder in the pan for use later.

Preheat an air fryer to 180°C.

Place an upturned metal pan (such as a cake tin) in the air fryer to lift the steaks closer to the element above. Cook the steaks at 180°C for 8 minutes, then turn for 3 to 5 minutes more. If you feel they are too rare for you, give them 2 or 3 minutes more.

Pour the pan juices from the air fryer pan into the remaining melted garlic butter in the little saucepan on the stove.

Fry the eggs, quickly rinse out the air fryer basket, dry it and preheat at 200°C. Put the chips in to reheat just before serving.

Pour the pan juices and butter from the saucepan over the steaks when serving with the chips and fried eggs. Dunno about you, but I like my fried eggs on top of my steak, for the runny yolk to ooze all over the meat. Yum. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023.

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.