Author Archives: stacey

Quick Butter Chicken

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This isn’t my recipe, it’s Arron & Claire’s, and it’s a keeper. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s tasty. In short, this recipe gets the job done on nights where I am craving Butter Chicken and don’t have a jar sauce on hand in my pantry. Luckily, I stock all of the ingredients to make it when push comes to shove. 🙂

Quick Butter Chicken:
4 Chicken Thighs, bite size cubes
1/3 C Plain Yogurt
1 tbsp Garlic, minced (or 1/2 tea Garlic Powder)
1/2 tbsp: Garam Masala/Cumin/Ground Ginger/Chili Powder
S&P

Oil
1/2 C Yellow Onion, diced
30 g Cashews, rough chopped (opt)
3 C Passata Sauce

5 tbsp Butter
1 tbsp: Ginger, grated/Chili Powder/Cumin/Ground Coriander/Garam Masala
1/2 tea: Sugar (or a pinch of carrot, grated)/Salt

2/3 C Water
1 C Heavy Cream (18 – 35%)
5 tbsp Butter
1/4 tea Chicken Stock Powder

Mix the cut up meat in the yogurt mixture and rest it for 20 mins as you prep everything else. When ready, get your skillet heated up. After 3 mins, add some neutral oil and drop the meat in carefully in small batches. Brown the chicken to take advantage of the maillard reaction. All of that browning = flavour. (The meat will finish cooking as it rests in the hot sauce later.) Rest rest each browned batch in a bowl with paper towels set inside as you work.

In a bigger skillet, or a big pot, heat up some different oil and dump in the diced onion to soften. Add the cashews. Sautee for a minute before adding the passata sauce. Stew that together for 5 mins before adding the meat in. Stew the sauce another 5-8 mins to cook the meat through.

At the end, add the water, butter, heavy cream and chicken stock. When you’ve stirred it all together, plate some of the meat in shallow bowls off to one side, top it with a ladle of sauce, and drop the starch of choice (cooked rice, mash potatoes or naan bread chunks) over the sauce. Serve with a dollop of sour cream if desired, topped with some chopped cilantro leaves.

Air Fryer Roasted Tomato Soup

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Hands down, this is the best tomato soup I have ever eaten. I was never a fan of Campbell’s tomato soup, and I can only recall a few times I tried to make my own with mediocre to horrible results. The difference, for me, is the roasting of the vegetables.

In a bowl, I tossed quartered 1 pint of cherry tomatoes, one shallot, a glub of olive oil, S&P, 1 tbsp dry basil (rubbed between my palms), and three baby garlic cloves (the ones that tuck in between the full size cloves in a head of garlic).

I laid a sheet of tin foil in the basket and dumped the mix in to roast on 375*F for 15 mins. Look how gorgeous this turned out! * swooning *

While this cooled off a bit, I set up the cheesy toasts to bake in the air fryer for 8 mins. I had pizza cheese kicking about, so I used that on the top side after I buttered both sides of a sliced up Portuguese bun. All of these decisions were the right decisions. Look at the colour on that cheese when they were finished! Love.

I blitzed the mixture for five seconds alone before adding the chicken stock. I love rustic soups, so I barely ran it longer than 30 seconds, but if I were in the mood for silky smooth, I’d go longer to, say, 90 seconds or more. I would stop when I reached that texture.

And then I put it all together. I had a hard time resisting the urge to scarf it all down before I got the photos I wanted for this post. I was really hard to resist. I can’t stress that enough! 😉

 

Air Fryer Cinna Bun Bombs

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Using a container of Pillsbury Dough crescent rolls, I made some cute cinna bun bombs that I filled and glazed. The husband ate them up! Here’s how I did it:

Cinna Bun Bombs:
1 can Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, in tact
4 tbsp Sugar + 1 tea Ground Cinnamon

Unpack the crescent roll, but don’t unroll the dough. Cut the roll into eight pieces. Turn them on their side and push down on them to flatten them out to about 1 1/2″ discs. Shape the discs so they are round and flattened.

Drop each disc into a bowl of the mixed sugars and roll it around to coat the whole outside. Place the discs into the preheated air fryer basket to bake for 10 mins at 325*F.

When bombs are cooled off, make glaze and pour it over the tops. This is a quick set glaze, so you can pack it up within 20 mins for transporting.

Glaze:
1/8 tea Ground Cinnamon
60 g Powdered Sugar
15 mL Whole Milk (or 18% cream)

Optional: You can fill the bombs by making a deep cavity hole and piping your own pasty cream in.

Cake Mix + Soda = Soda Pop Cakes

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I’m not a big fan of basic birthday cake, and by extension, cupcakes. But. I have to believe if you spice up a basic cake batter, I might try a portion should I be offered. I made half a box of yellow cake mix for the husband’s recent birthday, but I forgot all about flavouring it because I wanted to try futzing around with the icing in a can to make a galaxy looking effect for him. It wasn’t special beyond the icing effect which turned out ok. He liked what I was going for.

Anyway, back to the flavour matrix. There is a Youtuber who did a taste test on most of the above and she only deemed a few of them worth the effort. If you care, here is her full video.

What I Air Fried This Week

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I made a lot of the same things I’ve already made, and I also went back to try the Chocolate Croissants again because I wanted to play with the times.

Instead of the typical 350-400* bake, I dropped it down to 300-320* for ten mins using a can of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and a crushed up Flaky chocolate bar. Nailed it!

I also saw this video recipe for Lemon-Pepper Wings and decided I needed to try it since the flavourings were right up our alley. I mean, lemon and pepper? C’mon! So I used frozen chicken parts that I coated in seasonings and then in flour. I dropped them in the basket and flipped once half way, cooking them at 400* the whole time ( 8 mins + 8 mins).

The recipe called for rolling them around in some melted butter with the lemon-pepper blend, and they were fantastic. What I didn’t like was how the butter made the crisp texture straight from the air fryer soggy. :-\ I will definitely make these wings again but I will roll them in the lemon-pepper dry seasonings before I cook them and forgo the butter bath altogether.

And if that doesn’t work, I will dust the crispy wings in the lemon-pepper seasonings as a rub after they come out of the air fryer all hot and crispy.

Yes, I know. I need better lighting for my pictures. I agree. I have a ring light but my kitchen is still largely a mess from the unexpected repairs the husband had to do in there, and my ring light is buried in a corner right now. Oh, well.

Air Fryer Italian Meatballs

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I made 4 dozen mini meatballs the other night because I needed to use up the medium ground beef I bought two days beforehand. I had other materials I needed to use or lose them at the same time, so this what I decided to make to test out my air fryer.

PS: I paired them with this lovely red pesto sauce I bought a few months back.

Italian Meatballs:
1 kg Med Ground Beef
1/2 C Italian Seasoned Breadcrumbs (optional, for bulking out the filling only)
1/4 C Parm Cheese, grated
1 Egg
3 Shots Hot Sauce (optional)
2 Tbsp Dried Parsley
S&P

I used this meatball tool from my late MIL’s house. It scoops up the perfect mini meatball size portions.

I bought some shallow foil pans from the dollar store that fit my 10″x10″ basket perfectly, and they ended up holding 16 balls each, so that helped speed up this whole cooking process unlike cooking meatballs on the stovetop in a skillet. I am not a fan of making meatballs on the stovetop and finishing them in the oven. Too much splatter to clean up. Not with the air fryer!

I cooked each tray of balls in their first runs at 320*F for ten mins with a gentle shake of the pan (not the basket), and for their second run I blasted them at 400* for the last five mins. I temped them before blasting and again when they finish (to verify they did at some point hit 165*).

PSL Creamer

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For Sabrina who asked me for this recipe today at work.

Pumpkin Spice Coffee (Latte) Creamer:
1 1/2 C 35% Whipped Cream
14oz Sweetened Condensed Milk
1/4 C Canned Pumpkin Puree
1/2 tea: Ground Cinnamon / Allspice

Cook 1/2 C of the cream with the puree and spices over a simmer for 15-20 mins.

Cool the mixture about 15 mins before whisking in the other 1 C cream and condensed milk. When fully combined, cool down in the fridge completely.

Use all up in one week. Shake before you use each time.

Air Fryer Round Up

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Sorry, been busy at home with some home projects that came up unexpectedly, and work, and… air frying everything that’s not nailed down, of course! LOL

Here are a few things in picture form. I’ll do posts for each item but it’s getting late tonight, so here is round up to look at for now:

Sausage
Pumpkin Pie (warmed up only)
48 Mini Meatballs
Chicken Enchiladas
Lasagna Sandwich
Onion Rings
Lasagna
Crispy Chicken Strips

This was a great sausage, cooked perfectly in the air fryer at 350 for about…12 mins.

This store bought pie was cold when we brought it home, so I dropped it in the basket after I made dinner and unplugged it, just to warm up using the residual heat. Lovely.

Homemade Italian meatballs, cooked at 320*F for about 10 mins, shaken a bit once, temped at about 158*F before being blasted at 400*F for another five mins to finish them off perfectly giving them the deep colour I was looking for.

These chicken enchiladas were the bomb! I loved how fast these came together, and how tasty they were. I made a lot of them over a few days to use up all of the materials and to get it out of my system before turning to other things I want to try in the air fryer.

I saw this idea for a lasagna sandwich on Tik-Tok, so of course I had to make them. I regret nothing! 🙂

These store bought frozen onion rings took me two tries to nail. I sprayed them the first time as I dropped them in the basket, and they were soggy after 20 mins at 400*F. The second time, I dropped them frozen in the basket and cooked them for 10 mins at 350*F, and then flipped them and cranked the temp up to 400* for the last 7-ish mins.

I made a LOT of lasagna sauce for the lasagna sandwiches, so I baked a lasagna in the foil pan to use it all up. The thing I learned was a thick lasagna is NOT the way to go. Two shallow pans of lasagna cooked back-to-back for something like 20 mins at around 350*F would have been a better idea. I will have to test this again in the future.

I love my chicken nuggies, so of course I love chicken strips, too. I love them breaded and crispy, on a bun, with lettuce/tomato/sauce. So good. 🙂 These were also really good dipped in fridge door sauce whipped up on the fly.