Being a good chef can sometimes resemble being a parent – you’re going to want to check in on your food every now and then to see that it’s fairing well. The more you take care of your food as if it was of great importance, the better the dish will be. Well, that’s what I think.
Checking on your food is easy in a pan or in the oven where you can remove the lid and look through the glass door. Air fryers, on the other hand, don’t come with lids and glass doors. Correction: Some air fryers might but the ones I’ve used and seen don’t. Air fryers come with a detachable part containing the basket – that’s where you put your food. Your food is, therefore, hidden inside the air fryer while it’s cooking, and checking on it becomes impossible unless you open up the air fryer and withdraw the basket from the main unit. Can it be done?
You can open up an air fryer and remove the basket to either check on the food or shake it around while the air fryer is cooking, but do it quickly. Opening up the air fryer will cause the heated air to escape, this forces the air fryer to reheat the circulating air. Because the air fryer’s cooking cavity is rather small, it doesn’t take much time to reheat it. Keeping the door open for long periods of time can, however, result in undercooked food.
Some air fryers automatically stop cooking when you remove the basket from the main unit. I think this is a feature that’s been installed to prevent the air fryer from continuing to cook when the food has been removed. Air fryers with this feature normally resume automatically once the basket has been put in place.
Keep in mind that an air fryer, just like an oven, needs to keep the circulating air heated in order to cook food. An oven can easily overheat if you’re keeping the door open for too long. This is because the oven’s sensor is telling the heating element that it needs to stay on because the set temperature isn’t being maintained (because we let the heated air escape). This can, in turn, cause the heating elements to stay on for too long, which can scorch your food.
I do not know if the air fryer operates the same way or if it simply continues to distribute heat throughout the entire cooking session regardless. I haven’t seen any big differences in scorching with air fryers, or at least not the ones I’m using. Comment down below if your air fryer has overheated when you’ve kept the door open for too long. You can probably tell that I’m interested.
Another thing to keep track of is the air fryer’s cooking timer. If your air fryer doesn’t pause when the basket has been removed, then you’re most likely reducing the time you’re cooking your food by quite a bit. First and foremost the actual time that the basket is withdrawn and secondly, the time it takes the air fryer to get back to the set temperature. This may not be as important when you’re making fries, but it will be when you’re cooking chicken in the air fryer.
Removing one minute of cooking time from a perfectly cooked chicken wing could result in an undercooked chicken wing. So, make sure to be quick when you open up the hatchet if your air fryer doesn’t pause – or add a minute to the cooking time to avoid eating undercooked chicken.
So, You Can Remove the Basket While the Air Fryer Is Cooking?
Yeah, the air fryer’s basket can be removed from the main unit while cooking. This is beneficial when cooking items that are stacked upon each other that need to be shaken or turned over to ensure they’re evenly cooked. Some air fryers won’t start the cooking program unless the basket is placed correctly in the unit, others will pause as soon as the basket is removed from the air fryer. Placing the basket in the cavity and pressing the start button should resume the cooking cycle.
It’s hard to say what you can or can’t do with an air fryer because there are a ton of different models of air fryers. Some features are somewhat universal, such as being able to set a timer and pick a cooking program. Other, more advanced features, may be unique for certain models. The more you use your air fryer, the better you will handle it.