HOWTO: Cook shrimp in an air fryer

We recently got a cool new toy, something that I've wanted for a very long time: An air fryer!

What does an air fryer do? It doesn't actually fry. It is a convection oven that uses forced hot air to cook things quickly. These "air fryers" are meant to be used sort of like deep fryers; they're good for things like fries, potatoes, chicken wings, breaded shrimp, and other snacky things that you would cook in a deep fryer, if you had one. Well, I don't want a real deep fryer, because all that oil is bad for you, and it makes your home smell like a Burger King. So I've been wanting one of these things for a while. When I first started looking these up a couple years ago, I saw that that Philips was selling them for $200 -- just too expensive for me. I started looking again recently and saw that there are now some other well-reviewed ones from other brands for under $100. I ended up buying this GoWISE USA GW22639 3.7-Quart Programmable Air Fryer on Amazon for about $62. It was list price for somewhere around $70 or $80, so I ended up buying a used one (a returned one, I think) for $65, then I got an extra five percent off thanks to our Amazon card.

We've had lots of success with our GoWISE USA GW22639 3.7-Quart Programmable Air Fryer! Timing (and temps) on different foods can take some trial and error; the manual isn't very detailed, and online instructions vary greatly. But still, our first attempts at cooking food in this thing have gone very well. We did a "test case" of frozen french fries (that happened to be Dollar Tree) and they came out perfectly on the "chips" (fries) setting. We've since cooked chickpeas, chicken wings, shrimp and more in it.

Here's a short video I made showing how easy it is to make frozen shrimp.



All you do is take the frozen breaded shrimp and throw it in the pot. Make sure it evenly covers the bottom, and try to have only one layer of shrimp, if possible. The "shrimp" preset setting cooked the shrimp for 15 minutes at 330 degrees. I've also done it on the "fish" setting, which is 20 minutes at 400. That was a bit too long, and yet when done on the shrimp setting, they could have perhaps gone for a minute longer. So next time, I'll go somewhere in between.

Also, now I know how to use iMovie.

Note: The air fryer is likely not suitable for cooking either crab claws or cocaine. You have been warned.