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Ever since air fryers took over our kitchen counters, the world of home-cooked food has gotten much crunchier. And some of the best foods to air fry aren’t what you might expect — not frozen fried appetizers or chicken breasts, but vegetables. Yes, your air fryer can take everyday, boring Brussels sprouts and turn them into perfectly crispy bites, or roast so-so spuds into delightfully browned potato pieces (just don’t use too much oil). However, not all vegetables are suitable for air frying; you should skip cooking light, delicate leafy greens like spinach and kale.
The reason lies in how air fryers work. Rather than simply releasing warmth into the cook chamber, air fryers circulate hot air, essentially blowing it around the basket so it touches all sides of your food. While this is great for eggplant parmesan or even cooking whole canned asparagus spears, leafy greens don’t have the weight to stay put, and they can fly up into the heating element — potentially singeing, or even catching fire.
Safer methods for crisping up leafy greens
Let’s say you want to do something different with your leafy greens — meaning you don’t want them to wilt as they cook down, like they do in a hot skillet. You want them to crisp up, but unfortunately, blasting them with the heat of the air fryer just isn’t safe. You can make plain or curried coconut kale crisps by baking them in the oven (the way we used to, before air fryers were a thing). All you need is a baking sheet and a wire rack that fits inside it, like one of these from Qukaka. You don’t even have to crank the oven that high — between 200 to 225 degrees Fahrenheit will likely do the trick, since the greens are so light and thin to begin with.
You can also bust out your dehydrator if you’re not looking for crisp greens within 15 minutes. This appliance can take around two hours to turn your kale or spinach into chips, but it’s fairly hands-off, so you can just stick the leaves in and go about your business. If your dehydrator works unevenly at times, you might want to pop into the kitchen and rotate the trays a bit now and then.
