In wall oven vs. air fryer, higher temperature matters less than the flow of air. Air fryers have a fan that spins at ~2600rpm, which combined with a smaller cavity gives you some serious cooking wind.
Decent air fryers are also moving that air in a deliberate way, down the outside edges of the pot/basket and then up from the middle. They are designed to get as much air as possible around the food, which is what creates the textures and color development that evoke a comparison to deep-fried results.
You could cook chicken nuggets or Brussels sprouts in your wall oven at 400F and get worse textures and slower results than if you cooked the same foods in an air fryer at 360F.
I’ve had this dream that you could use meat glue to make chicken in shape of a human hand, with some sort of red sauce inside so it looks like blood when you cut into it, so that you could make jokes about human meat tasting like chicken.
I got my cast iron skillet today. Celebrated it with a pretty thick new york strip. Was about to baste it and instinctively grabbed the handle to tilt the pan.
By the time i finished dealing with the nth degree burns on my hand my steak got to medium-well.
It’s been a while since I posted, but tonight I think I succeeded in actually making black pepper beef that tastes better than a restaurant. No pics because it was gone too fast, but due to an aborted camping trip (meaning we pulled all the food we’d need from the garage freezer), we had about 24 oz of previously-frozen sirloin to use up. Since we’re locked down again, I had to make do with what we had in the house, which was the steaks, one onion, some dried ginger, the regular array of normal spices, and various asian sauces.
I slightly modified (doubled!) this recipe:
I had no bell peppers, unfortunately, so it can only get better. Also, some recipes don’t respond well to doubling, but this one most definitely did. the only thing I needed to add a little more of was black pepper.
I usually slightly overcook the meat when I make Chinese food, so the fact that I perfectly cooked the steak makes me feel like I won Top Chef, and the sauce is pretty much perfect. I like a lot of pepper, so as written it would probably be fine for most people, but I added more. The oyster sauce and sugar add just enough sweetness to offset the pepper…damn this is a good recipe. Probably would be fine with flank or skirt steak, but I’m in love with the tenderness of the sirloin I used.
Definitely going to make this again when I can use fresh ginger and bell peppers, just to see what effect that has.
This looks good. I may give it a try. Black pepper beef is one of those things that when it’s good, it’s great, but most of the time it’s not.
1 tsp of black pepper definitely seems like not enough. I’d probably bump that up. I also found it odd that there is no pepper in the marinade. But maybe it doesn’t make a difference.
I think the ginger in the marinade gave it a nice kick. I doubled the recipe, and after adding a little my total pepper used was 2.25 tsp, and it is definitely peppery, especially on the finish. I also ground my pepper very coarsely, and minutes before cooking, so that probably had some effect.
I had to look this up, but it seems like you use veggies, oils, meats, and aromatics. I’d lean pretty heavily into ginger and garlic based stir fry dishes, I guess.
