AirFryday — or AirFyreday? Playing with fire in the age of the air fryer

Was I playing with fire when I had a frank conversation with my air fryer this week? Not either of the two smaller machines – the greenhorns entrusted only to deliver decent chips and the occasional toasted sandwich. This was the big one, with which (whom?) I’d had a bit of a fallout after its rotisserie component failed me. Miserably.

Three times.

No matter how hard I tried, it seemed almost impossible to (first) secure the blimmin’ fowl in the machine, and then (second) position the rotisserie rod (for that is what it is called) in the machine without it falling off.

This machine is a large 25-litre Kenwood, and is very much like a big conventional oven on a small scale – large for an air fryer, but tiny for a regular oven. It stands on a countertop and has a door with a clear glass window, shelves, and a pipsqueak version of a black iron oven dish. And it comes with a rotisserie, and a cylindrical chips basket.

Three times I strove to make the rotisserie do its claimed job. Three times I failed. Then I had a big fat moan in a newsletter a few weeks back, even threatening to turn the machine out and buy a proper old oven again.

Some weeks went by, during which time the indoor braai in my kitchen and I grew fonder and fonder of each other.

Then I thought, nee wat. I was letting the machine off too lightly. I decided it needed a good talking-to, and I didn’t hold back. While it glared at me the way a recalcitrant teenager does when dad is reading him the riot act about his report card, I laid in.

“You good-for-nothing, no-good bum!”… well, not quite. But I did yell at one point: “Can’t you be a bit more like your…”

I stopped, wondering where the sentence was headed. Was I actually likening an inanimate object – if a really annoying one – to an errant child? “Can’t you be more like your younger brothers? Can’t you be more like… more like…!?

And then I realised that I was pointing to the other two, much smaller, air fryers at the other end of the kitchen.

“Can’t you be more like them?”

I was losing the plot. But it was true: the smaller machines never gave me a moment’s trouble. Then I spied the gaping maw that constitutes my favourite piece of equipment in this kitchen, right alongside the shelf where my Kenwood spends its useless days: my indoor braai.

“Can’t you be more like – that!? Huh?”

Yes, denizens of the southern suburbs, not only have I moved to the northern suburbs, but I now own that singular item of cooking equipment that is presumed to characterise the northern suburbs home: the indoor braai. And I use it – to braai.

There is fire in my kitchen, and I am cooking with it.

But, instead of just lying there and taking its medicine, the older of the three air fryer siblings gave me lip. Turns out, it was way more pissed off with me than I was with it. Him.

And now I’d gone too far, like the parent who’s allowed his temper to get the better of him. I’d taken out my frustrations on this stroppy adolescent instead of dealing with it myself. I’m the grownup, after all. (Well… sometimes I wonder.)

I needed to give it more understanding, listen to its concerns.

“Have a seat, fella. Tell me your woes.”

And lo, the air fryer machine did say unto me, “Look, mister, you’re not attaching the &%$#en rotisserie rod properly. Have you thought of reading my instructions? Or googling, maybe? A YouTube how-to vid?”

I took to taunting the beast by increasingly frequent use of the indoor braai. While it wallowed there, ignored and detested, I cooked chops, wors, even roasted a chicken in a potjie, just to show it what can be done in a piece of equipment that actually does its job.

I grilled vegetables on a plancha right over the coals, baked potatoes in foil, caramelised onions. I even held a giant 950g sirloin on the bone, clamped in a pair of braai tongs, right over the terrifying heat while its fat cap turned crunchy and delicious.

All this while casting sidelong smirks at the Beast and saying, “See? See? How’s THIS for a roast chicken, dumbo?! How’s THAT for fire!? Hah!”

Then.

Then….

I came to my senses. Woke up as if out of a reverie or nightmare. Looked at myself, sighed, and didn’t like what I saw. Was this what I had become? The award-winning cookbook author, the newly slim gym bunny risen from the ashes of the pre-heart surgery slob, so easily reduced to spite and bile?

No. I needed to pull myself together. I could do this. Hey. wait… maybe I could even get the stupid bladdy rotisserie thing to work? To do its job.

The beast was saying nothing. Just lounged as if with its hands in its pockets, the way a wronged person does who believes that in time they will be proven to have been right all along. Stoic. Resilient. Waiting. Or maybe just sulking.

It was as if the machine knew that its rotisserie was in fact able to roast a chicken. And that – surely not? – it was I who was the incompetent idiot.

And lo, I did come to my senses. And I did glance guiltily at the Beast and then quickly look away, embarrassed and ashamed.

I decided I would have another go.

I bought a chicken, put it on a board on the countertop, and stared at it for several uncomfortable minutes.

I ransacked the kitchen cupboards until I found the components of the rotisserie for the Kenwood oven. They were disassembled. The rod lingered in a casserole at the bottom of a cupboard, lopsided. One of its clamps was stuck underneath it. The other was in a ramekin at the back.

The cylindrical chip basket, which can also fit in the slots inside the machine that would (or should) hold the rotisserie rod, was there too, so I got it out and considered giving that another go as well.

Oh yes: I’d forgotten that part. In January I fried a batch of (lightly-oil-coated) potato chips in that basket thing and they weren’t too bad, though I thought it more trouble than it was worth. Also, I like to taste chips as I go, which is why I always accidentally cook more than I need. So. Just so you know.

Anyway, I haven’t cooked anything afresh in that tubular metal cage but I will, soon. Just maybe not chips.

The chicken on the countertop wasn’t giving me anything I could work with. So I glared at it harder.

I rinsed off the rod and clamps, dried them, and stuck the rod into the bird. It squawked. The bird did look a bit the moer-in with me.

I pushed the rod out of the other end, pushed a clamp on and shoved it onto the flesh. If the bird’s head had still been attached, it would have rolled its eyes.

Then I put the other clamp on the other end, pushed it along the rod, and tried to give it a purchase in the, erm, “bottom” end of the fowl. It just would not stick. Neal, my son-in-law, came in and was more successful. But it was too close to one end of the rod and needed to be in the middle of the machine to roast evenly.

Finally, the chicken was seasoned and clung to the middle of the rod in a way that looked a bit too desperate, as if it knew it might fall off.

I took it to the machine and, after a few attempts, managed to secure it in the slots, turned the machine on and watched. It stayed on the rods. The rod turned.

But the wings caught at the bottom of the oven.

Out it came. I found the kitchen string, trussed the wings end, tied it firmly, and back into the machine it went. Turned it on. Success.

I discerned one more thing while watching the poulet revolve on its spit: it would be best to truss the thigh end of the carcass as well, to give it a bit more support up there. But I was satisfied that, at last, I had a chicken turning on a spit in the recalcitrant blérrie oven.

And I had no choice but to forgive the Beast, apologise for not having given it a fairer chance at showing its mettle (metal?), and to spend an hour on my least favourite machine at the gym next time I went.

The chicken was succulent, delicious (having been basted with truffle oil I was given a few months ago), and the Beast’s position in my kitchen rankings was re-established.

Mea culpa.

Now I’m going shopping, because I need to buy foil trays. And a chicken.

Last night, after writing everything above, I decided to do another rotisserie chicken, but to do it better. Boy am I glad I made that decision, because this is how it turned out:

I trussed a bird again, but I placed a foil tray below it, because I’d decided, on the previous occasion, that the “drippings”, as my late Yorkshire mum used to call, well, drippings, were being wasted.

While one may not necessarily want to consume that schmaltz (and it is a sought-after part of a cooked bird), it contains a whack of flavour.

I also remembered one thing I’ve long loved about a spit roast, and I’m talking about those large outdoor ones that some clever guys use for cooking a whole lamb on the spit. They place potatoes below the roasting, revolving animal, to catch the fat and juices and roast them at the same time.

So I bought baby potatoes too. Leaving them unpeeled (but washed and dried), I sliced them in half and put them in a foil tray. The foil tray was large enough to fit the machine base edge to edge, so I placed the potatoes to either side, allowing space for the chicken to turn. It worked a dream.

The bird was seasoned inside and out with salt, pepper, garlic powder and plenty of pimentón (smoked paprika).

The bird was trussed at both the wing and thigh ends and held firm. It turned and cooked and turned a delicious golden hue. The potatoes burbled and turned equally golden while “Golden” from K Pop Demon Hunters played in the background.

Okay, I made that part up. But some of the rest of this is true. DM