Air-fried fries are

fries French fries (North American English), chips (British English), finger chips (Indian English), french-fried potatoes, or simply fries, are '' batonnet'' or ''allumette''-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin from Belgium and France. The ...

cooked in an

air fryer An air fryer is a small countertop convection oven designed to simulate deep frying without submerging the food in oil. A fan circulates hot air at high speed, producing a crisp layer via browning reactions such as the Maillard reaction. Some pr ...

. They have thick skins with soft insides.

History

Fred van der Weij, an inventor, was looking for a way to crisp a french fry without

deep-frying Deep frying (also referred to as deep fat frying) is a cooking method in which food is submerged in hot fat, traditionally lard but today most commonly oil, as opposed to the shallow oil used in conventional frying done in a frying pan. Nor ...

them. He first tried using a

convection oven A convection oven (also known as a fan-assisted oven or simply a fan oven) is an oven that has fans to circulate air around food to create an evenly heated environment. The increased air circulation causes a fan-assisted oven to cook food fast ...

, but found that this dried the french fries out. In 2005, he started to develop the air fryer. This helped companies make non-deep fried french fries.

Process

Air-fried fries typically cook for up to 45 minutes. Air-fried french fries cook with less oil than those which are fried conventionally, which reduces the amount of

calories The calorie is a unit of energy. For historical reasons, two main definitions of "calorie" are in wide use. The large calorie, food calorie, or kilogram calorie was originally defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of on ...

in one serving of air-fried fries. However, some oil is still needed to make air-fried french fries. The air-fried french fries also need to be spread out in the air-frier, otherwise the fries will steam. Air-fried fries look done before they are actually ready.

References

French fries {{food-stub