Air fryers have truly transformed the home cooking industry, so much so that some of our favourite celebrity chefs praise their efficiency. Jamie Oliver takes this a step further in his new air fryer cookbook, which features original, ingenious tips and tricks – including his genius air fryer tray hack to double cooking space.
When using one of the best air fryers to help prepare your daily dinners you may know the basics of using an air fryer, but leading chefs hold the key to discovering inventive methods for getting the most out of this on-trend appliance.
The latest game-changing advice comes from Jamie Oliver, whose recent cookbook 'Easy Air Fryer: Big & Bold Delicious Food' is already a bestseller. Along with mouth-watering recipes, Jamie has shared clever ways to use your air fryer more efficiently, including his trick for maximising the cooking capacity.
Jamie Oliver's air fryer tray hack to double cooking capacity
Aside from learning how to clean your air fryer, they're a wonderfully simple appliance to aid everyday meal prep. Not only do they speed up the cooking process but they do so in a rather compact way, perfect when you're working on keeping your counters clear in your small kitchen.
It's no secret that Jamie loves using his air fryer to demonstrate his quick and easy meals. His most recent ode to the appliance shows how they can be even more space-saving, as shared on his Instagram account @Jamieoliver.
"So when I wrote this cookbook me and my team pushed the air fryer to its limits," Jamie explains in the Instagram reel. "And one of those ways was having kind of things cooking on the top of that little tray and other things reheating in the bottom."
To demonstrate the air fryer tray hack, Jamie removes the small tray from inside the drawer, pours black beans and veggies into the bottom, and places cubed slices of sweet potato on top of the tray he then pops back in over the beans.
He says, "So I’ve got a recipe in here for beautiful sweet potato tacos, with black beans. You get lovely bubbly, creamy beans and you get really nice roasted sweet potato."
The sweet potato needs more heat to roast so they're closest to the heating element, while the beans only require enough heat to warm through, making the underneath compartment the perfect spot. This double-decker approach to cooking allows you to utilise space more efficiently.
And it doesn't need to always be veggies. "But if you think about meat or fish rendering onto beans, chickpeas, tomatoes. Things like that you can really max out flavour and efficiency fast," adds Jamie
Our homes e-commerce editor Laura Honey is a huge fan of this hack, and she has reviewed all of the best air fryers on the market and knows everything you need to know about air fryers, i.
She says, "The air fryer tray hack is genius that'll turn yours into a mini-stacked oven. Some designs actively encourage you to use the base and then layer the trays on top. The first time I used it was on the Breville Halo Flexi, but Ninja's DoubleStack is another design that encourages you to use the base of your drawer."
Laura points out that there are endless combinations you can use the hack for however it's important to take note of what type of food you're putting where to avoid making an air fryer mistake.
"There are some very simple combinations that you can follow if you want to make the most of your space and time. The food on the base mustn't block airflow around the basket, otherwise, none of your food will cook. You'll also need to keep an eye on the food on the top because it might cook faster," she explains.
All that's left is to try this air fryer hack for yourself, Laura adds that her current favourite is placing bacon on the top shelf and eggs or hash browns on the bottom. Chefs kiss indeed.
This model already works as a dual-drawer air fryer. All you have to do is slide the divider in and out of place. Each half of the oven can air fry independently to the other and you get to choose between deep baskets as well as solid and mesh trays. It covers every function and every possible option.
The DoubleStack is designed for smaller kitchens that lack countertop space. Even though it's slimmer, you can still cater for a whole family with this air fryer. Ninja claims it can serve eight people, which feels like a bit of a stretch – we'd say it's more like 4-6 people. But you can double that with Jamie's helpful space-saving hack.
Compact, cheap, and easy to use, the 3.8-litre Cosori is almost unbelievably good. It is available in a range of colours, making your air fryer more of a design piece than anything else on the market. The app is one of the best we've ever tested: it's a must-have for beginners.
Now all you need to worry about is making sure you haven't placed your air fryer in one of the worst places in your kitchen. You might be surprised but It's important to know the risks of bad appliance placement, particularly with air fryers because they can emit a rather dangerous amount of heat.
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