---
title: 'Air Fryer vs. Garden: Epic Battle of Fresh Recipes'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=K7CerwL-ZIM'
video_id: 'K7CerwL-ZIM'
date: 2026-08-10
duration_sec: 1024
---

# Air Fryer vs. Garden: Epic Battle of Fresh Recipes

> Source: [Air Fryer vs. Garden: Epic Battle of Fresh Recipes](https://youtube.com/watch?v=K7CerwL-ZIM)

## Summary

In this video, the creator embarks on a culinary challenge: harvesting fresh ingredients from their garden and transforming them into delicious dishes using an air fryer. The video features five recipes: onion rings, egg-in-a-hole, strawberry pop-tarts, roasted vegetables, and roasted grape leaves stuffed with beef and rice. Each dish is presented with preparation steps, cooking times, and taste tests, highlighting the air fryer's versatility and the benefits of using homegrown produce.

### Key Points

- **Mission Introduction** [00:12] — The creator's mission is to pick fresh ingredients from the garden and use the air fryer to create epic dishes, starting with onion rings.
- **Onion Rings: First Attempt** [00:25] — The creator has never tried onion rings in the air fryer before. They use fresh spring onions from the garden, which are juicier and have tighter layers than cured onions.
- **Green Onion Powder** [01:12] — The green tops of the onions are dehydrated overnight and blended into a green onion powder, used to dust the onion rings later.
- **Breading Process** [01:41] — The onion rings are coated in a batter made from flour, paprika, and ice water, then dredged in flour and panko breadcrumbs for a three-part breading.
- **Air Frying Onion Rings** [02:09] — The onion rings are sprayed with oil and air fried for 10 minutes, then flipped, sprayed again, and cooked for another 5 minutes.
- **Sauce Mishap and Success** [02:35] — The mayo sauce broke, so the creator uses beet ketchup instead, which they find more dynamic. The onion rings are declared the best they've ever had.
- **Egg in a Hole Attempt** [03:28] — The creator tries an egg-in-a-hole recipe using an indent in bread instead of a full hole, inspired by a video they saw. They use homemade bread at 70% hydration.
- **Air Frying Egg in a Hole** [04:39] — The bread is buttered, an egg is added, and it's air fried at 375°F for 8 minutes. The result is a runny yolk but runny egg white, which the creator doesn't prefer.
- **Egg in a Hole Verdict** [05:08] — The dish is described as an upgraded toast, not better than pan-fried, but easier to make and with crispy bits. The creator would try it again.
- **Sponsor: Seed Probiotic** [05:35] — The creator discusses their sponsor, Seed's DS01 Daily Symbiotic, a prebiotic and probiotic in one. They take two every morning for digestive support and highlight the compostable packaging.
- **Air Fryer Baking Limitations** [07:11] — The creator notes that air fryers are not ideal for baking delicate items like cakes or muffins due to intense convection heat, but they excel at crusty items like pie crusts.
- **Strawberry Pop-Tarts Preparation** [08:01] — Strawberries are harvested, some dehydrated for icing, and the rest are sugared overnight. The jam is made with added pectin and reduced by half for intensity.
- **Pop-Tart Assembly** [09:11] — The dough is rolled out, filled with jam, folded, crimped, and frozen. They are air fried at 365°F for 7 minutes, flipped, and cooked for 2-3 more minutes.
- **Pop-Tart Taste Test** [10:47] — The pop-tarts are described as a delight, with flaky homemade crust and fresh flavor, not tasting like store-bought pop-tarts.
- **Roasted Vegetables** [11:13] — The creator roasts a mix of sprouting broccoli, fennel, and carrots in the air fryer at 385°F for 10 minutes, achieving crispy exteriors without overcooking.
- **Roasted Veggie Verdict** [12:16] — The creator rarely roasts vegetables in the oven anymore due to the air fryer's convenience and execution, though the broccoli overcooked slightly.
- **Potato Harvest** [12:56] — The creator pulls early potatoes from volunteer sprouts in a brassica bed, yielding micro new potatoes for a batch.
- **Smash Potatoes** [13:44] — Potatoes are pre-boiled for 15 minutes, air fried at 400°F for 10 minutes, then smashed and air fried for another 10 minutes for extra crispiness.
- **Roasted Grape Leaves Experiment** [14:40] — The creator experiments with roasting grape leaves instead of steaming, inspired by dolmas. They boil the leaves, prepare a beef and rice filling, and air fry them.
- **Grape Leaves Verdict** [16:38] — The roasted grape leaves are mild and delicious, with a crispy texture. The creator suggests removing the stem and trying kale or Swiss chard instead.

## Transcript

Today I have an epic battle for all of you. In one corner, we have my air fryer. In the other corner, we have my garden. And summer is ramping up and things are just popping off right now.
So my mission today is to pick as much fresh ingredients from my garden and then use my air fryer to transform these homegrown ingredients into some absolutely epic dishes. And we're gonna start things off with onion rings.
Which, believe it or not, after hundreds of dishes tried in the air fryer, many years of experimentation, I can't remember ever trying onion rings, which is kind of crazy, but onions right now are just popping off in the garden. I have hundreds of onions in the garden
ready to go, and you can see they're bulging up nicely, but these are still considered spring onions. In the next month or two, the tops will fall, and I'll pull them and store them, but these spring onions are still delicious. The biggest difference from a normal cured onion you would
by the grocery store is that they're a little juicier because they haven't dried out and those layers are a lot tighter together. So I picked a bunch of onions, I seal dressed them, I got them cleaned up. First I cut off the green tops which did not go to waste. I dehydrated those overnight,
I threw them in the blender and made a really delicious green onion powder which I'll use to dust the onion rings later. And I sliced up these onion rings and like I mentioned they are super fresh and the rings are very tightly bound. So I'm just kind of letting the onion decide
where it wants to separate. If there's a few layers locked together, that's totally fine with me. And those little centers of the onion, they can be crispy onion bites instead of actual rings. And I made a batter to coat these onion rings with some flour, a little bit of paprika, and ice water,
which I just whisked in slowly until I got the perfect consistency to coat the ring. Then I dumped all of the onion rings in flour to coat them so the batter would stick. And then the Final step was a little dip in some panko breadcrumbs for a three-part breading.
I'm placing all of these onion rings on this little tray that I bought, which fits into my air fryer. It just makes it a little easier to transfer these fragile onion rings over to the air fryer, but of course, you can just pop them right on the tray, no problem.
And I'll give these a coating of a spray oil, and I'm going to air fry them for 10 minutes. And after 10 minutes, I flip them over, give them another spray, and back into the air fryer for another 5 minutes.
Can you believe this? I'm impressing myself right now. That looks like it was deep fried.
So originally I was going to make a mayo. I did make a mayo and put the onion powder in there, but the mayo broke. So I was going to do two sauces, but honestly, this is the beauty of cooking and accepting your mistakes.
steaks. I think the dusting with the beet ketchup is more dynamic than having two different sauces. There we go. Weep baby Jesus. That is a bite right there that I'm nervous about.
That's not just a good onion ring. That's maybe the best onion ring I've ever had and it came out of the air fryer. The onion has melted away, which I feel like is the goal with onion rings. Just soft gooeyness in that.
And they're just a little less greasy coming out of the air fryer versus the deep fryer. I love these. I just did not expect them to be that good. Moving on. All right, so up next, I wanted to try an egg recipe
since you know I have a lot of eggs from these chickens, which I'm considering part of my garden. But I will say I have never once figured out a good egg recipe in the air fryer. I've tried a bunch over the years, nothing that has stuck.
But I did see this video right here, which caught my attention the other day and I wanted to try this. It's an egg in the hole, but you just don't make a full hole. You make an indent so the egg of course doesn't fall through in the airfryer.
And it all starts with some bread, which you know I'm making some scratch. I use my standard overnight dough recipe at 70% hydration, which you can find a link to below. And after that proofed overnight, I plumbed it into a loaf,
popped it into a loaf pan, hit it with some sesame seeds, and let it proof another hour then into the oven for some delicious sandwich bread
And the rest is pretty simple from here. I took a cup and I pushed the cup right into the center to make a nice indent for the egg to go. Then I took some salt and butter and I just buttered up all of the edges and then in goes that egg and I did plop a little knob of butter and some salt
pepper which I forgot to film and I popped this into the air fryer at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for eight minutes. Here we go. We're good. I don't want to cook it too much here. The ketchup.
So the egg is runny. That's pretty solid but I don't like that this egg white is also runny. I didn't want to cook this any more than it already was. I do like that you can just eat eat this like a sandwich. Mmm.
Better than I thought. It's like an upgraded toast, basically, with the crunchiness of baking it in the air fryer. I can't say it's better than a traditional pan-fried toad in the hole. Probably a little easier to make, but I do love the crispy bits that I'm now dipping in the egg.
Would I try that again? Probably. It's growing on me. Mmm. So before we get into the next recipe, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, which is Seed, a product that I've personally been taking for the last few years.
Actually, it's the only supplement that I've ever taken consistently in my life. And the reason for that is one of my biggest values is my health and how I actually feel on a daily basis. It's one of the main reasons why I'm growing so much of my own food,
because when I consume high-quality ingredients and I'm digesting them throughout the day, my body just has an easier time breaking them down. Really, my goal on a daily basis is to consume a lot of delicious food while feeling digestively
neutral. I'm trying to avoid that discomfort, but I have found that just eating fresh or cooked ingredients is really not enough because we evolved as humans to eat a lot of preserved and fermented foods, and those foods are packed with probiotics.
And I do make and consume a lot of them, but I find that I still need to supplement with a probiotic for additional digestive support. And I found personally the best way to do that is with Seed's DSO1 Daily Symbiotic, which is a prebiotic and a probiotic in one.
And you can see the seed capsules are unique. It's a capsule within a capsule. And that outer capsule actually ensures the 24-strain broad-spectrum probiotic formula actually gets protected and can make it to your gut where it can do its thing.
I take two every single morning, and the reason I've consistently done that is because I do find that it makes a difference in giving me that digestive support I'm looking for. I also love Steve's commitment to sustainability.
You get the starter kit, which is completely compostable. And then every month, you get a refill in these little compostable pouches, which makes them nice and easy. And you can use Code 25 for 25% off your first month of Steve's DS01 Daily Symbiotic.
Now back to some recipes. All right, so one thing I've learned over the years is that the air fryer is really not the best place to bake in. The oven is the best place to bake in. Air fryers have such an intense little package of convection heat that they cook the exterior a lot faster than the interior,
which is not ideal for more delicate things like cakes or muffins. But it does bake something very well, which are crusty things, like a pie crust. And I learned this because I tried making Pop-Tarts many years ago in my initial experiments, and they worked great.
So I've made a few different baked goods similar since. But since strawberries are in season right now and they are just absolutely pumping, I've been collecting about a pint a day over the last week so I can make a jam for some delicious Pop-Tarts.
So I washed off all of the strawberries, I chopped off all the top, and I'll take a few of those strawberries and dehydrate them overnight, which I'm going to be using for an icing. And the rest I covered in sugar and just let them sit overnight until they look like this.
Now strawberries have a lot of natural pectin in them already, but I did add a little additional pectin, just to make sure this jam would really set and hold up as a filling. And I popped this mixture into a pot and brought it up to a boil
and started mashing those strawberries up And the strawberries give off a good bit of this foam which I just scraped off to make a nice clean jam And to really ensure that this filling was super intense, I reduced the jam by about half and all of those strawberries made this much jam
right here, which for me is going to be well worth it for these pop tarts. Now for the crust, I whipped up a quick pie dough made in the food processor by cubing up some cold butter, adding that to some flour and salt and just blending that together and then
slowly pouring in that ice water until I got a nice dough. So remember those dehydrated strawberries? Those went straight into the grinder to make a powder
and I dumped that into a bowl with some powdered sugar and then just enough lemon juice to get the perfect consistency for an icing to go on top of these popcorns. So now that my dough has rested and chilled, it's time to roll out some pop tarts.
I took the dough, divided it into two to make things a little bit easier to roll, and I hand rolled the dough out to about an eighth of an inch. And then I sliced strips about three to four inches wide, and I made them long enough so I could just fold one end over to the other.
And then for the scrap pieces, they can just be stacked on top of each other. Then I brushed the dough with egg wash, I added my filling, making sure to not over-stuff. I did my best, it was pretty tempting with this jam, and then I folded over the dough,
pushed in the edges, and then crimped everything shut with a fork. When all of the pop tarts were formed, I poked some holes in the top so they wouldn't explode, egg washed everything up, and then just popped them in the freezer to set to make it easier
to handle. Now once they set up a little bit, at this point I could pick them up and egg wash the bottom, and I placed them in the air fryer at 365 degrees for 7 minutes, and then flipped them over, bake them for another two or three minutes until they are evenly brown on the
bottom and the top. All right. Let's do this. Anticipation right now is high.
Which one do I choose? I think this one. Oh, God. I did want these to cool a little bit in the fridge. I felt like they would taste better. They were set just a bit. What do we think about that interior? And you taste it, my friends.
I do. I do. Mmm. Whoa, that's a delight right there. This is inspired by a pop-tart, but when you use homemade fresh pie crust, the flakiness, the lightness, the lack of preservatives,
it doesn't taste really that much like a pop-tart, if I'm being honest. Mmm. So good. Now, one thing I had to do in this little battle was roasted vegetables. Pretty standard in the
air fryer for me actually to the point where I rarely roast vegetables in the oven. And I had a mix of some nice roasting vegetables in the garden so I just went around and I picked some sprouting broccoli the first of the season. I had a nice head of fennel and then a few fresh carrots. I got all
the veggies washed up and ready to be prepped and I just really rough chopped everything up to create sizes that I thought would roast somewhat evenly together. I dumped them all in the air fryer, gave them a spray with some coconut oil and then I set the air fryer for 10 minutes at 385 degrees.
Gave them a little salting after they were done and you have perfectly crispy but not overdone veggies. You still want some bite especially when they are so fresh like this. I would say it's very
rare at this point that I roast a veggie in the oven and not in the air fryer just due to convenience and also just execution of the air fryer. With the intensity of the convection cook you can get a Crispy exterior without overcooking the interior.
It's perfect. Mmm. Wow. Just fresh cooked veggies from the garden. That carrot with teriyaki sauce. Oh, yeah. Mmm. Broccoli. Since the broccoli was more delicate, you can see it overcooked a little bit.
All right. Crispy broccoli. That's all. Fine with that. That's good. I could eat a rice bowl like this every day maybe for the rest of my life. Maybe every other day. I'd be happy. Now the number one cooked thing in the air fryer is definitely potatoes I personally do it all the time so I am happy to say that there are some potatoes in the garden right now But here the thing I got this huge patch of potatoes growing right here
which are about two months away from a real harvest. And to the right, you can see there's some potatoes kind of randomly sprouting up from the ground. Now, these were potatoes that actually weren't harvested from last year, that made it through the winter, and they sprouted up in the
spring, but they're kind of mixed in with this Brassica bed, and they're really just taking up room. So what I decided to do was pull all of these to clear room for that bed, and it's super fun to pull potatoes early because you can see how the potato actually develops. You've got this
little network happening underground, and these tubers are shooting out, forming these nice potatoes. But right now, you've got these little micro new potatoes, which is fine because all I is one batch and I got it from all of these random potato sprouts. So I got
these potatoes washed up and for me whenever I roast potatoes I would say 95% of the time I pre-boiled and that's exactly what I did. I cooked them for about 15 minutes until they were nice and soft. Then I got them in a bowl and
coated them with some salt and pepper and I got them in the air fryer at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes until they started to brown up. Which is not where I'm gonna end. I mean you could end here and have a decent roast of potato
But if you want extra crispy goodness, you gotta take those potatoes out, you smash them with a fork, you create all those little nooks and crannies, and you get them back in the air fryer for another 10 minutes for perfectly crispy potatoes.
Mmmmm. All right. Mmm. All right. For this final dish, we're doing a complete experiment.
I was walking around in my garden looking for inspiration of things I could cook in the air fryer, and I spotted the grape leaves. And I thought about the only dish that I know of that uses grape leaves, which are dolmas,
which are those little stuffed grape leaves that are steamed. But why not roast them? At least let's see what happens if we roast them. So I took all the grape leaves, I cleaned them off, and then I boiled them in salt water for about two minutes,
got them in some cold water to cool. Now for the filling, I just picked a bunch of things from my garden. I have some onions, I have some garlic, I have some herbs. And I chopped up the onions, I chopped up the garlic, and I got that sauteing in some fat.
And after about five minutes when that had cooked down, I added in some ground beef, and then cooked all of that until it had some nice color on it. Now these are not traditional domas in any way, just inspired by that dish.
So I just spiced these up with whatever I had, which was some jar of masala. Then I added in about a cup of rice, deglazed it with some water, and I let that come to a boil, and then cooked it for about 20 minutes with the lid on until that rice was perfectly tender.
Then I separated all of my grape leaves and stuffed them up and threw them in the air fryer.
So when I was doing research for this, I found one recipe on the entire internet that roasted grape leaves instead of steaming them. And they just roasted them in the oven with the sauce.
Nothing quite like this. So I'm so interested to see how these taste. They look great. And while they were roasting, I just whipped up a quick dipping sauce. I felt like they needed it. Just some yogurt, some fresh herbs from the garden, a little bit of garlic, some citrus,
and sugar sauce. All right, here we go. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Oh my god. You know, I never loved traditional stuffed grape leaves, but these, these are mild. These are delicious. A little crispy.
One thing I would do for next time is remove the little thicker stem on the grape leaf since it's a little tougher and chewy. But the grape leaf has a pretty good flavor. I think honestly, I would do the same exact thing with some kale or Swiss chard, and it might even be better.
I'd have to try it, but I like these. Chard and air fryer, they're both winners today. Lots of great recipes. Hope you enjoyed. If you want more seasonal content just like this, click right here.