The Philips Airfryer & a Croquetas de Pollo Recipe

Since we're on the topic of planning healthy back-to-school lunches for your kids, I thought now would be a great time to share with you my current favorite kitchen gadget. If you follow my Instagram account, you know that a few weeks ago I got a Philips Airfryer. I've been wanting one ever since I happened to see a tweet from Best Buy. I was interested because I read that it fried food with at most two tablespoons of oil. It's the healthy way to fry!

Now you should probably know that against my will, we eat a lot of fried food in this house. Soft tacos, salmon patties, fried okra, chimichangas, fried potatoes...they all make their way to our table on a regular basis. So when I heard there was a new fryer on the market that fries food without you having to immerse it in hot oil, I was almost sold on the idea.

Then I actually got my hands on it.

My daughter and I have been experimenting with it and we are thrilled with the outcome. For the first time ever, I decided to try and make chicken croquetas using a very old family recipe from Spain. My Tía Visi gave it to me when I lived there for a short time after I graduated from college. The idea suddenly popped into my head after I was inspired by looking through the included cookbook and saw recipes for various croquettes. So I asked my daughter if she wanted to learn a family recipe and try out the new airfryer at the same time.  Always a willing assistant in the kitchen, she grabbed her apron and chef's hat and happily helped me with my little experiment to take that old recipe and merge it with a modern appliance.

We were all thrilled with the results!

I'm going to share my recipe below, but don't be passing it all around or I'll get in trouble for sharing it! But first, I want to tell you about the airfryer.

The Philips Airfryer

The most important thing that you know is that you don't add ANY oil to the fryer AT ALL. It uses something called Rapid Air Technology to move the air around your food quickly and precisely for faster cooking and perfect results. The starfish design on the bottom of the drawer circulates the air in some secret, magical way that makes it cook just right. In fact, it cooks so well, the little timer on the front of the model that I bought only goes up to 30 minutes because that's all you'll need to cook anything in this thing. An adjustable temperature control up to 390 degrees lets you fry, bake, roast and grill all sorts of foods.

The only oil I used was two tablespoons of EVOO that I mixed in with the breadcrumbs in which I rolled the chicken. And after only eight minutes in the airfryer, they were almost perfect!

Now, I don't claim to be a food blogger or even a good cook (as is evidenced by the picture above), but these croquetas de pollo were SO GOOD. The only mistake I made was in not tearing the chicken into small enough pieces. (Hey, it was my first time to make these.) We're making more this weekend and have already shredded our leftover chicken from some tacos we ate this evening into what I hope is the perfect-sized pieces.

Do you know what else it cooks? (Ahem. Practically everything.) It makes the BEST cheese sandwiches any of us have ever eaten! We just brush a little melted butter on the bread, then fill it with shredded cheddar, preheat the airfryer, and stick in the sandwich. Five minutes later - BING! It's done! And 5 minutes after that - Whoops! It's gone.

And do you know what the best part is? Clean up is a breeze because you can stick the food basket and the drawer directly into your dishwasher! Boom!

It also comes with a cookbook with recipes for different types of low-fat fried dishes things like potato croquettes, crispy fried spring rolls, bacon wrapped shrimp, cod nuggets, chicken tenders, french fries, and more. The recipes showcase the versatility of the appliance so that you can grill, bake and even roast food healthier, faster and more conveniently.

You can find a ton of videos on YouTube about cooking with the Philips Airfryer, but this one is my favorite. I'm dying to try and cook a steak in it!

Tía Visi's croquetas de pollo

And now! Just in case you'd like to try your hand at making my Tía Visi's croquetas de pollo from my family in Spain, here's a little recipe I modified to be used in our airfryer. They are so good, you will never look at croquetas the same again? Click on the picture below to download/print the file.

Abrazo!

Disclosure: I received product for the purposes of this review. All thoughts and opinions are strictly my own.