An air fryer is actually one of the best ways to make steak if you don't follow the prescribed recipe in the link, but if you reverse sear (a reliable and well-known technique, usually done with an oven, which an air fryer is).
If your steak is about 1.5" thick, you can airfry at 260ºF for 18 minutes, flip once. This raises the internal temperature uniformly to around 130ºF.
Then sear 1 minute per side and 30 secs on the sides, to get a crust. That's it.
(no resting needed because it's a reverse sear, the internal temperature is already where it's supposed to be for medium rare).
Tip: remember to pre-heat your air fryer per the instructions in the manual. A 260ºF pre-heat should only take 2 minutes.
Sear without oil. The steak itself should have enough fat (if it doesn’t your cut of steak might have too little marbling). Also searing for 2 minutes produces very little oil. Run your range hood fan.
The reverse sear technique produces little oil splatter. My air quality monitor barely spikes.
Do you mean wetness as in the juices in the steak gravitate to the bottom? Or do you mean literally the bottom of the steak is wet? Either way neither of those issues seem to be a problem for me.
When I first started cooking in the air fryer I did flip it at half way though. I just forgot once and found it didn't make any perceptible difference, so gave up on it and it's just that one less task to do. My partner and I both agree it comes out awesome pretty much every time, and I'd say we are reasonably fussy steak eaters.
I don't worry about crust I guess? I don't think I even try to do that when I'm cooking them in a pan. I'm more interested in trying to get the fat right - it tends to crust over pretty nicely in the air fryer. It works better on thicker bits so it has longer in the heat.
I'm not really against it if you like it, it was half a joke.
But to me steak cooking is an art of sorts that means searing the outside while minimally cooking the inside(I'm a rare steak guy). That usually means letting it thaw completely, then just searing the sides at super high heat, for me on a griddle or cast iron pan.
I've never tried to oven or air fry a steak, but I have to imagine you can't get anything close to a seared steak that's rare inside. We want to retain moisture, so blowing hot air at it seems like a bad idea.
I thought that way until I tried a reverse sear (oven at low temp and sear afterwards) myself. I am no expert at the physics behind it, but it works great for rare steaks.
Yes, the oven dries the outer part of the steak, but that means you get your desired crust in less time in the pan. That results in a clearer distinction between the crust and the juicy interior without the gray band in between.
It's no secret that air fryers work like a convection oven, but they're not at all the same. Air fryers in my experience are much, much faster to cook, and easier to clean. Perfect for one or two person meals really.
For example, I can get fries from frozen to on the verge of burning in 15 minutes with an air fryer. My oven isn't top of the line or anything, but would take at least twice as long, and probably waste a lot more energy in the process.
So if nothing else, the temp and timing info here would be key as they likely won't match typical oven recipes.
I kept hearing that "air fryers are just convection ovens" and was very confused, because I know air fryers use a fan. But it turns out Americans call fan ovens, the one type of oven that specifically does not rely on convection, "convection ovens". Another thing on my list of things Americans say that mean specifically the opposite.
It makes me wonder, do Americans take into account the fan when following recipes? Common wisdom is to lower the temperature by 10 degrees for a fan (assuming recipes are for a real convection oven). Or are all American recipes written for fans?
The vast majority of ovens in the US are not convection. So any recipe is written for a standard oven.
But, even convection ovens don't cook the same as an air fryer. Air fryers are like a mini turbo convection ovens. It's like comparing a camp fire to a blow torch.
One key difference is that they continually exhaust some of the air (unlike a conventional oven) so they are much better at lowering moisture content while cooking, which helps produce a crispy texture on things like fries.
Good point. They actually make see through air fryers now. I bought one as a backup but haven't used it yet, I'm interested to know if it'll just steam up and be useless or not.
Hey OP, I'm not sure if this is something you control or if it's a Vercel config thing, but when I try to share your website using iOS's share sheet it actually sends the direct link to your Vercel instance instead:
That is a very good question. It is especially concerning when you realise that most air fryers use black plastic, and most black plastics are made old electronic scraps which are coated in flame retardants and other toxic chemicals like phthalates.
