---
title: 'Do These Viral Air Fryer Recipes Actually Work?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ik8YEXNfBQU'
video_id: 'ik8YEXNfBQU'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 1240
---

# Do These Viral Air Fryer Recipes Actually Work?

> Source: [Do These Viral Air Fryer Recipes Actually Work?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ik8YEXNfBQU)

## Summary

An air fryer enthusiast tests six viral air fryer recipes to see if they actually deliver. The video covers a ricotta cake, a rice paper bagel, garlic parmesan chicken skewers, blended chicken strips, and zucchini rings, rating each for taste, ease, and creativity. The results range from a perfect 10/10 to a disappointing 2/10.

### Key Points

- **Ricotta Cake** [00:46] — Ricotta cake: simple batter with ricotta, eggs, cornstarch, lemon zest, honey. Baked at 340°F for 25 minutes. Rated 7/10 for taste but noted as slightly curdy and not sweet enough.
- **Rice Paper Bagel** [03:35] — Rice paper bagel: rice paper hydrated in egg, filled with cheese, scrambled eggs, and bacon. Cooked at 370°F for ~16 minutes. Rated 10/10—crispy, chewy, gluten-free.
- **Chicken Skewers** [08:46] — Garlic parmesan chicken skewers: chicken breast with butter sauce. Overcooked despite reduced time; greasy. Rated 4-6/10.
- **Blended Chicken Strips** [12:45] — Blended chicken strips: chicken blended with egg and spices, piped and air fried. Dry and cardboard-like; rated 2-4/10. Technique worked but flavor and texture poor.
- **Zucchini Rings** [16:07] — Zucchini rings: battered zucchini rings with a dip made from zucchini centers. Recipe had missing measurements (water for batter). Rings crispy initially but softened. Rated 5-6/10.

## Transcript

Oh no.
>> Houston, we have a problem. Oh jeez.
>> No.
>> Oh.
>> So, being an absolute air fryer fanatic,
I am always on the search for new
recipes. And I have been seeing some
very interesting things out there in the
internet over the past few months. But
even if a recipe is super viral, you
never know if you actually are going to
strike gold unless you get in there and
you try it yourself.
>> You know how I feel about these. You
hate it.
>> About four. That might be a 10 out of
10. So, I've collected six of what I
think are the most interesting air fryer
recipes I've seen in the recent months.
All ideas that I think could
realistically incorporate into my weekly
air fryer meal prep. So, I'm going to
give them all a try to see if they work
and they're actually delicious. All
right, so first up, we've got a recipe
that certainly is intriguing. It almost
seems a little too good to be true by
Tasty Yuri. It's like 15 seconds long,
so we can just watch it together. If you
mix two cups of ricotta cheese with two
eggs, cornstarch, lemon zest, and a
touch of honey, then pour it into a
baking dish and cook it in the oven or
air fryer, you get a high protein,
flowerless, gluten-free ricotta cake
that's absolutely delicious.
>> I mean, for having no flour in like how
many ingredients? 1 2 3 4 5 six. Six
ingredients. That looks impressive. So,
we're going to give it a try. And about
90% of this cake is ricotta cheese. Then
you add a few eggs. You grate in some
lemon zest. I would be interested to see
what the lemon juice would have done as
well, but it wasn't in the recipe. And
then just a few tablespoons of
cornstarch, a single tablespoon of
honey, so very mild on the sweetness.
And I just whisk this together until it
was smooth. Since we're air frying this
cake, I had to find a baking dish that
would fit in my air fryer, which I lined
with parchment paper. I did give it a
quick spray for safety. I don't think
she did that in her video. And I ladled
in the batter until it was about 3/4
full. All right. So, that was extremely
easy to make. One of the easiest batters
of all time. And it looks like she's got
everything written here. She actually
has the breakdown for both oven and air
fryer, which is nice. So, 340 25
minutes. Pop that right in there. 340 25
minutes, which makes sense. Usually,
when you're baking in the air fryer, you
want to bake at lower temperatures. All
right. 9 minutes left. I'm just going to
give it a check. I always get a little
nervous when baking things in air
fryers. Okay. Yeah. Oh, wow. It is a
smaller dish, so it might need less
time. Nice. It's puffed. Let's take off
3 minutes since it's a smaller dish. All
right, let's see. I'm just going to
probe it. Oh, you know what? Does need
the full time. Put it back in. Few more
minutes.
She definitely cooled it cuz she was
like pressing it together. Wow.
>> It's like a basque cheesecake.
>> Yeah, it does have that burnt top. What
do you think?
>> I want like that little piece.
>> Just a chunk. Yeah.
>> Does have a cheese. I mean, it is
cheesecake. I think cooling would have
helped, you know, the structure. Tasty.
Eerie. Here we go.
>> Oh, hot.
>> Oh my god. That was like lava.
>> That's good.
>> I was concerned about the one tablespoon
of honey. So, I mean, it's definitely
not sweet.
>> Yeah, it's not sweet, but it's not like
weirding me out or anything. It's really
tasty.
>> Definitely the easiest cake I think I've
ever made. It's got like a curdy vibe
from the ricotta. It's not like smooth
cheesecake.
>> I bet if you blended the ricotta it
would be better texturally, but this is
tasty.
>> I like it.
>> We're going to judge out of 10.
>> Oh, I'll give it like a seven out of 10.
I think it could be a little more sweet
and I would have liked a little bit of a
smoother texture,
>> but tasty.
>> I totally agree with everything you
said. I mean, I could change the score,
but honestly, seven out of 10. Yeah,
perfect.
>> Cool.
>> All right, so this next one went mega
viral. It comes from the Chef Out West.
There's a very good chance it's come
across your screen at some point. The
first time I actually saw it was other
people like hating on this recipe. It's
a bit controversial. You'll see why. So,
when I'm in New York, one of my absolute
favorite things to eat is the perfect
bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Last
time I was there, I ate more than I am
willing to admit. And since I've been
home, I've been absolutely craving one.
All right. So, basically, he's making a
bacon, egg, and cheese, but he's using
rice paper to create the bagel. Now,
however you feel about that, it is
certainly intriguing. I mean, I am
definitely interested in trying it. It
actually looks delicious. And one of the
top comments right here from pastime,
great name by the way, I've got your
back. Let's give it a try. So, the first
thing I'm going to do is pre-scramble my
eggs. And I rendered out some bacon
earlier for this recipe, which you
really don't need to see. But I did get
some really nice clean bacon fat, which
I'll be using to cook my eggs in for a
little extra flavor. And someone did
mention in a comment that you should
soft scramble the eggs since they get
cooked again in the air fryer, which is
exactly what I'm going to do here.
Making sure to pull these eggs just
slightly under where I would normally
like them. Now, there's a lot of air
fryer rice paper hacks on the internet,
but what sets this recipe apart from
anything I've ever seen is rather than
soaking them in water, you actually
hydrate the rice paper in more eggs.
Now, after watching the video a few
times, it's still a little bit unclear
if he dips the rice paper in on just one
side or both sides, but I'm pretty sure
it's both, which is what we ended up
going with. And you lay the rice paper
on a clean surface, overlapping the
circles like a ven diagram. I added a
layer of shredded cheddar cheese, went
on with that soft scrambled egg, piled
on the bacon, and a little more cheese
so everything would just kind of melt
through the mixture. And I started at
one end slowly wrapping up the rice
paper, which for my first shot was not
the easiest process.
>> Oh yeah, that is not easy.
>> Then once I had this bacon, egg, and
cheese rice paper tube, I gave it a nice
swirl, making sure that end piece
created a sealed seam. Little homemade
everything bagel spice. Why not get some
on the bottom? You know, that is
awesome. There you go. Look at that
beauty right there. That looks like an
actual cooked everything egg bagel. A
little bit harder than he makes it look,
but that's, you know, typical short
content. You don't really know what's
going on until you get in there. Now, he
has one of those like DM me the recipe
things where you send you the
do. I had a cold, so Carly has a mask
on. Um, so I don't know the full recipe.
Everything's obvious except the baking
temperature, but I asked Chad GPT and
I'm feeling pretty good about this. 375
6 to8 minutes flip. 6 to8 minutes. Pop
her in.
>> I only can do 370 8 minutes. All right,
first 8 minutes. Okay, looking good.
That's actually nice and crispy like a
bagel. Yeah, the bottom is super soft,
so the flipping I think is essential.
>> I am a little bit concerned about
overcooking the eggs. I'll just do 6
minutes on that side.
>> Ooh. Oh yeah, that looks incredible. It
smells so good.
>> Wow.
>> Oh my god, that's crazy. It looks like
aing bagel.
>> I know you were judging this.
>> I was judging this really hard.
>> First of all, I'm so No oil. Didn't need
any. I was like, do I need to spray this
thing?
>> It smells like a bacon, egg, and cheese
just meets like a bit of a pastry effect
or something.
>> I hope it's good. There's no way it's
not going to be good. Wa!
>> Oh my god.
>> What? Look at that. What? That's
unbelievable. This is carbless.
>> This rice is not a carb.
>> You're right. This is glutenfree.
This is gluten-free.
>> But that's a that's a win.
>> Wow.
>> I think what's interesting is a bagel is
so dense. There's so much carb action
going on. Whereas this is mostly
internal ingredients. I think we need
ketchup.
>> Nice.
Oh my god,
>> that is really good.
>> That might be a 10 out of 10.
>> Not that I judged the recipe,
>> just skeptical. M.
>> The texture is so good. It's not crispy
in the middle. It's like chewy like a
bagel is.
>> I've tried summer rolls in there, like
frying the rice paper with not the best
success. Maybe it's the egg.
>> That's what's genius. I would have never
thought to dip the rice paper in the
egg.
>> Yeah. And I feel like you can use that
technique in
>> He did like multiple things. Ham and
cheese and like a he did like a cheese
steak.
>> Even on like a spring roll though, you
know what I mean?
>> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. That would
be that would be like a good egg roll.
>> I don't know if I would ever make this
though cuz it looks so hard and rice
paper stresses me out. But let me think
about that.
>> Would I make this? When would I make it?
>> Like it's like a fun group activity. But
I I think it is like kind of a skill.
The rice paper thing.
>> It was a little bit messy, slightly
difficult, but it still came out
amazing. first time with zero practice.
>> I also think it would be easy to just
do, you know, a bacon, egg, and cheese
in a just a spring roll shape. Like, it
doesn't have to be this bagel shape. You
can still do the flavor and the
technique and not have to have three in
a row.
>> You got you got I think this is just
like the best glutenfree option.
>> Oh my god. Yeah. So, I know some some
celiac people whose minds would be
blown.
>> Yeah. Wow.
>> That's a 10 out of 10. No question.
>> Very agree. All right. So, next up,
we've got a video that went pretty
viral. It's by Flavors. Flavors by
Frangi Pane. Frangipane. Oh, that's her
last name. Christina Frangipane. Frang
Frangiipane. I don't know. I'm dyslexic.
I can't read. And we have a
>> garlic parmesan chicken skewers.
>> Now, I have been seeing so many of these
chicken skewer air fryer recipes popping
up all over the internet. And there's so
many different flavor profiles and
versions of these skewers. So really, I
was just trying to pick one that was
easy enough to recreate on like a weekly
basis and that also looked delicious.
And I think these garlic parmesan
chicken skewers nail both of those
things. So we're going to give them a
try. So I've got some chicken breast
here, which I'll dice into cubes. And
I'm going to season them up with some
olive oil, paprika, onion powder, and
garlic powder. Now, I didn't have any
skewers that actually fit in my air
fryer, so I just saw down some
chopsticks and skewered up the chicken
for some perfect little retrofitted
skewers for my air fryer. Now, for this
butter sauce, I got a few tablespoons of
butter melted in a pan. For the garlic,
I'm using my favorite pre- chopped
frozen garlic hack. I'll pop one of
those cubes in. Then I add some chili
flakes and I let that infuse in the
butter for a little bit. Then I cut the
heat and I add in some grated parmesan
and a bunch of chopped parsley.
All right, so we're going to pop those
in. Yep, I saw these uh chopsticks to
the perfect length. Oh, that recipe full
breast is perfect for this basket. And
she says 375, 20 to 25. I'll start with
20. All right, just check it in at 10
minutes. I'll flip them. Nice. Back in.
All right, I pulled these 5 minutes
early. I don't trust cooking chicken
breast for 20 minutes. Those actually
look amazing. Come on. Air fryer
skewers. One. Two. Carly's very excited
right now.
>> Very excited about this guy.
>> So, one thing is like, do you really
need that much butter? Oh, that didn't
work. Really? She said to cut the heat
and mix in the parmesan, but it melted.
Yeah,
>> maybe the heat was too high. Oh, what a
bummer. So, that didn't work. What I'm
going to do is I've got the infused
butter. I'm just going to strain out the
>> Yep. Thank you. Strain out the butter.
>> We used like the fresh grated. They used
like hand grated. That could be a
difference. So, now we'll add the
parmesan. And we'll just add Do have
some parsley or we use it all. Where's
the little man? Where's the man?
>> Where's the little man? Oh, he's right
here.
>> Oh, that looks great.
>> There we go. Still like not I don't
know. It's kind of weird to me. And then
we just Yeah. Okay. Is that enough? It's
a lot.
>> It's a lot. You don't need four
tablespoons of butter for this much
chicken. That's my first problem I have
with this. And I'm concerned that the
chicken could be overcooked. We'll say
it's chicken breast. It was in there for
15 minutes. It did get crispy.
>> It was a little overcooked.
>> I pulled it 5 to 10 minutes earlier than
she said.
>> I think people tend to
>> cook chicken, cook the out of chicken,
and that's cooking the out.
>> Delicious. Tasty though. I mean, how can
you go wrong with I would much rather a
marinade on the chicken that has it all
in there
>> that has enough fat that you can just
send it through the air fryer. You don't
need like it's so excessive.
>> I'm not going to do that ever.
>> The chicken itself has much more flavor
than the butter on it. You don't even
really need it. It just kind of makes it
greasy. I mean, it's delicious. It's
garlic butter with parsley in it.
>> Yeah. A little bit for shell in my
opinion. Like it looks good when you
brush it on, but
>> Yeah. I think it's really tasty, but how
could it not be?
>> Yeah.
>> You know,
>> well, it's it's overcooked.
>> It's also overcooked. Yeah,
>> which honestly Mike doesn't bother me
that much.
>> Yeah, it's I take up a little bit of
concern with that, especially cuz I
pulled it earlier.
>> Mhm.
>> Okay, score.
>> Score. I'm going to give it like I'm
going to give it a six cuz I don't hate
it, but it's nothing like special to me.
You hate it.
>> Four. Four out of 10.
>> Moving on.
>> All right, so we've got another one from
Tasty Yuri. This one went super viral.
And again, it's like 10 seconds, so we
can just watch it together. If you blend
chicken with eggs and spices, shape it
into thin strips using a pastry bag and
cook it in the air fryer, you'll get
this high protein snack. Super crispy
and delicious.
>> All right, so I'm not huge on this high
protein fad that's going on right now,
but I will say that I have been trying
to increase the protein in my snacking
verse just, you know, sweet or starchy.
Trying to balance it out with some more
higher protein options. And this one's
intriguing enough that I figured I would
at least try it. And they are very
simple to make. I had some chicken
breasts left over from the skewer
recipe, which I'll add to the food
processor along with an egg, some salt,
paprika, garlic powder, and oregano. And
I'll process that up until it's super
smooth.
Interesting looking.
>> So then she used a Ziploc bag for the
piping of these things. And she popped
some parchment paper on the air fryer so
the actual mixture wouldn't just fall
right through the tray. And I just
followed her lead with these little
squiggly shapes she made.
>> All right. I'm a little bit skeptical on
the cooking time. She says 350, 10
minutes to get them crispy. So, we'll
see.
>> Oh, no.
>> Oh, jeez.
So, the convection pushed the paper up.
Oh, they were getting somewhere, too.
All right, we'll think this over and get
back to you. So, I'm just going to pipe
it out right on here. I think we'll be
fine. All right, 10 minutes. Oh, they
did get crispy. So, the recipe
worked. She wasn't wrong about the
timing. I don't know about Are they
crispy?
>> They're crisp. Well, yeah, they're
crispy. That's so weird. I guess cuz the
egg
>> Let's see.
>> About these though.
>> They're crispy.
>> I don't know about
>> I'm I'm most surprised that they worked
in 10 minutes and got crispy. The
texture
>> behind crispy. They have a crisp and
there's no flour in them. Like they
dehydrated. It's really interesting. It
kind of looks like a um fried chicken
skin.
>> I was just going to say like I think I
would much rather just eat fried chicken
skin.
>> Yeah, but there's only so much fried
chicken skin.
I think it would be better if it was
chicken thigh. They're very dry.
>> Not sold. I don't know. I don't know
about these, man.
>> Um
>> keep eating them.
>> Yeah. Like I guess if you're like trying
not to eat chips.
They're so dry.
>> They're so dry.
>> I really don't like it.
>> It's like cardboard a little bit. I
think chicken thigh. Work on the spice a
little bit.
>> Flavor them up a little bit more. And
you're on to something. I am impressed
that they worked.
>> Yeah, me too.
>> But will I ever make these again? No.
>> Well, you have you have so much filling
now.
>> Yeah.
>> Look how much.
>> Maybe we'll
>> we'll make some some dumplings.
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some chicken dumplings.
Or we were thinking you could actually
dehydrate. That would be interesting.
Make jerky. Um,
>> yeah, but it doesn't have that chewiness
that jerky has. It's just dry.
>> It's just dry. So, sorry. I have to give
this like a two out of 10. This is silly
to me.
>> I'll give it a four out of 10 just
because I'm impressed that it worked in
the air fryer.
>> And and I'm also still I'm still eating.
>> Yeah. And we're still eating it.
>> Nurse tastes a little bit like dog food.
If you're trying to make a treat for an
animal, that would be perfect. They
would love that.
>> All right. So, finally, we've got this
recipe coming in from the vegan doctor
himself. Dorn people through the vegan
diet, I guess. Now, just check this out.
Wow. Looks pretty tasty to me. And
what's really cool about this recipe is
he uses zucchini. I thought this was
like an egg corn squash at first, but he
actually cuts the centers out of the
zucchini, gives it like a really quick
batter, and then what's genius is he
cooks the inside of the zucchini, then
he turns that into a dip. So, just
really creative. This video went super
viral, so I figured there's something
going on here, and I had to give it a
try. So, first I'm going to slice up my
zucchini. His recipe, I think, used
four, but I found that two was plenty
for what I needed. And I did have some
little pastry rings which I used to cut
out the interior of the zucchini. I
dumped them into a mixing bowl, added
some cornstarch, breadcrumbs. He used
vegan parmesan. I'm just using regular
parmesan. Some salt, garlic powder, and
paprika. Now, I was so confused on this
next step because right here in his
video, he pours water in and it says
water on the screen. But on the actual
recipe on Instagram, no sight of water.
Then I went to the official recipe on
his website. Again, no sight of water,
but clearly it needs some liquid to
create the actual batter.
>> And I'm just going to eyeball it, I
guess. Let's see what that does. Yeah,
we need, of course, we need to make a
batter. That looks much better.
Hopefully, did I add too much? Uh-oh.
No, I think that's good. Yeah, that
looks much better. I might just add a
little bit more cornstarch. Yeah. Okay,
perfect. These look great. Now, add
these in. Give it a spray off the air
fryer. He said 425 minutes. I'll start
with 20. So, while those were air frying
for the dip, I first fried up those
zucchini centers until they were nice
and soft and had some nice color. I
dumped those in the food processor,
added some tahini, yogurt, lemon juice,
garlic powder, paprika, and oregano. And
again, right here in the video, it looks
like he adds some dill, which was
nowhere in sight on the recipe. I had
some parsley lying around from the
chicken skewers, which I added in and
processed that dip up until it was nice
and smooth. All right, we're checking
in. 8 minutes left. Oh, those look
already pretty crispy. Wow. Okay, so the
timing of that is way off as well. This
recipe is totally off the rails. You
know what? I'll give it two more
minutes. They look crispy. So, the
batter I will put full blame on him
because he didn't give me the water
ratio. It just thickened up a little
bit. Not as even as I want, but they
still came out well.
>> They look great.
>> I would say creative wise like 10 out of
10. Just
>> I would never think to make sauce with
this. really cool. But the recipe had
like 16 mistakes in it, so I'm deducting
points as we speak. Oh, we should hit
that with a little bit of salt.
>> Yeah,
>> zucchini rings.
>> The batter. I would like to make it
again, but you know what's the point if
you don't have the actual ratios? The
zucchini rings are a great idea. Never
would think of that.
>> I don't know how I feel about these.
>> What don't you like?
>> Maybe I don't like the dip.
>> Yeah,
>> the dip is like a good idea. First of
all, if you put the exact same spices in
the batter in the dip, which
>> I think that's what I'm experiencing.
It's like super one noted.
>> Yeah, it's very one noted.
>> And all I taste really is like tahini.
>> Yeah, we needed like a brighter, fresher
dip, but it might just be because
there's cooked zucchini in this. It's
like the same texture. You get like a
warm cooked zucchini vibe and then you
get
>> a warm cooked zucchini vibe. Yeah. I
don't know. These are like a cool idea,
but I think we could make them better,
especially without the restriction of
being vegan.
>> I'm eating them. I do love the
creativity. I love turning zucchini into
rings. Yeah, that that I do like
>> doing some calculations in my head. It's
like points going up for creativity,
points going down for a up recipe.
>> The other thing is they're crispy for
one second. Look at this already.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> I'll give it a six.
>> I'm going to give it like a
>> Don't do it. No. No. Do whatever you
want.
>> I was going to give it a four. I'm going
to give it a five cuz I'm eating it and
I like zucchini. But I just I feel like
this recipe needs some improvement.
>> All right. Fun things. Honestly, good
ideas. um some that were better than I
thought, some that were definitely worse
than I thought, but I've come out with a
lot of creative techniques and concepts
that I never tried in the air fryer. If
you do want 10 out of 10 recipes,
guaranteed,
check out my air fryer cookbook. It's my
top 20 recipes of all time. Would you
say all 10 out of 10? Well, that's up to
you to decide, I guess.