Air Fryer Sandwiches for Every Budget — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] So there's not much I enjoy doing more in the kitchen than pushing my air fryer way beyond what it was designed for. And today we are setting a brand new bar because in this video I am cooking six completely unique sandwiches at six different price points.

[00:16] Starting with just a $1 budget and working all the way up to a $250 sandwich. With the goal of using all my culinary and air fryer skills to make the best possible sandwich at every single price point.

[00:28] Mmmmm. Holy sh**. So we're gonna see today if increasing the budget will actually create a better final sandwich. And because we're making six completely different sandwiches, I linked all of the recipes and details below in a free Google Doc

[00:41] if you want to follow along and make any of these sandwiches featured in the video. And we're starting things off with the one dollar budget, which was the most limiting creatively in this whole video. To me, it sort of had to be the grilled cheese sandwich.

[00:54] I couldn't think of anything else on this budget, so I'm using some plain old white bread. I'm going to spread some butter on one side of each slice. I'll pop layer one, butter side down, right on the air fryer. Layer on a few pieces of cheese.

[01:06] Pop the second bread slice, butter side up. And this baby is off to the air fryer. All right, here we go. Real cheese. I'll start at 370. Four minutes on the first side. Yeah. What's that?

[01:19] Two to three more minutes. All right. I've never had bread on an air fryer before. Yeah, in the past it's been a little bit too crunchy, but this one looks good.

[01:34] Oh, shit. That's better than I thought. Oh, good. Yeah. Oh, my God. Wow, it's the best cheese ever. It's just like you blow on it and it melts and it just stays like so perfectly.

[01:49] It is the premier cheese. cheese. It's just, it's not, to me, it's not really cheese. It is irreplaceable though. This kind of makes me think that you should not be making

[02:01] fancy gourmet grilled cheeses. It's either this or nothing. It's really cute, but you can't be this. Would you say it's worth it? Yeah. This would be worth more than a dollar, in my heart. Worth it, my friend. One dollar. But we need more money. We need to increase

[02:14] that budget. Alright, so we're moving right into the five dollar price point. We've got a little bit of cash to work with here. And for me, five dollars felt like the perfect college budget so I tapped that into my roof and we're making

[02:28] something that I lived off of for years which are veggie flatbread melts. Now I used to make these things all the time in a pan because unfortunately air fryers did not exist when I was in college but this sandwich is just a slightly grown-up version of what I used to make

[02:42] yet it still requires basically no skill. First I'm going to take the zucchini I'm going to slice them in half I'm going to score each half and I'll toss them right in the air fryer and then I'm I'm going to put the red pepper right in the middle, give them a little spray of oil, and

[02:55] these are going in my air fryer at 450 degrees for about 10 minutes, and halfway through, I'm going to give that red pepper a flip so it chars on both sides. Then once they come out of the air fryer, I'm just going to let them steam in a bowl just for a few minutes, and you can peel off the skin of the red pepper if it comes off

[03:10] nice and easy, but it's not necessary for this family, and I'll just slice up all of the veg. Now, you can do this with a thicker flatbread, but these thinner ones are nice because they roll up like a wrap. and I'm just going to layer all the veggies right onto the flap red

[03:22] and I'm grating on some mozzarella, but you can use whatever milk and cheese you have on hand. Then I'm going to place the flap red right in my air fryer and I'll cook it at 400 degrees for just about four to five minutes.

[03:34] Then while that's cooking up, all I have to do is just light up some nice, crispier, firmer lettuce and then you just need to pick out your dressing of choice. I really like balsamic with the roasted veggies, but then for tuning into those collard roots, it's got to be ranch for this sandwich.

[03:49] And you can see after a few minutes in the air fryer, the cheese has melted and I have some nice crispy edges on the side of the flatbread. So I'll layer on some lettuce, drizzle on that dressing and wrap it up. Oh yeah baby.

[04:01] Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. That's so much better than I thought it would be. It's so good. For a veggie wrap. Yeah. So simple. So easy.

[04:13] Mmm. Worth it. So worth it. So worth it. Worth it. So worth it. So worth it. Oh yeah. Now we're moving on to the $15 budget, which in my mind felt like the perfect price point

[04:25] for a chicken sandwich. And you guys know that I love making chicken in the air fryer. But with a little bit more budget, we can start getting more ambitious with some of the components of the sandwich. So at $15, I am making a crispy Korean fried chicken sandwich.

[04:40] And since we're officially moving beyond the basics, I wanted to make the perfect soft homemade bun from scratch. And not only are these buns going to take this sandwich to another level, but we actually going to repurpose them for the next price point as well Now to get these buns as soft and fluffy as possible I starting with the tangzon which is a technique commonly used in Japanese milk bread by cooking down a flour paste

[05:02] That's going to create this super light and fluffy texture. Then to a mixer, I'm going to add my flour, salt, yeast, and water. Then I'll add in that cooked flour paste and I'll give everything a nice mix. And I'll let this dough rise overnight.

[05:15] And the next day, I portioned out my dough and formed them into buns. All right, so now that we have our buns for the next two sandwiches, it's time to move

[05:43] into these chicken cutlets. And I'm using boneless, skinless chicken side, which I'm just going to lightly pound the thicker parts to even everything out for cooking. And one thing I've learned over years of air frying is you never use a batter.

[05:56] They just don't hold up in the air fryer. You always have to use a breading. So for this one, I'm using equal parts cornflakes and panko breadcrumbs, which I'm just going to pulse together until they're fine, but still have some chunkier pieces for some extra crispiness.

[06:10] Then I'm going to add a generous amount of untoasted sesame seeds before running the chicken through a standard three-part breading process. All right, with the chicken taken care of, it's time to really flavor it up and knock

[06:38] out some of the finishing touches of the sandwich. First, I made a quick daikon and cucumber pickle to bring some nice crunch and freshness. Then I whipped up a sesame scallion mayo for a little bit of richness and some aromatic flavor.

[06:51] Then finally the sandwich would not be complete without a sticky, grazy sauce. So I made a really simple gochujang glaze and there's only one thing left to do. These cutlets are getting the dunk a lot.

[07:15] It's like fond me, me sort of natural chicken, me Korean.

[07:27] I mean. Delicious. I'm dripping. Dripping sauce. Wow. Wow. Yeah, I like the pickles just cool it down so much immediately.

[07:39] It's so good. Definitely worth it. I mean. Definitely worth it. I would pay like $26 for that. Yeah, that's like a Brooklyn Food Festival $26 sandwich that blows your ass off.

[07:56] Not like, you know, poop your pants type of way, but like... Yeah, I know. Now, my main goal of this video is to show you how you can level up your air fryer game, which brings me to the sponsor of today's video, Tasty.

[08:08] And every sandwich in this video was made using the Tasty Smart Ceramic Air Fryer. And if you've been following my air fryer journey for a while, you know I've been searching for a good ceramic PFAS-free air fryer for years now.

[08:21] So I'm so excited to get my hands on this thing. And not only does it have an excellent ceramic nonstick coating that has held up incredibly well after about a year of use, but it also has a feature that I've ended up using almost every single day, which is this built-in smart temperature probe.

[08:35] Now, if you're busy like myself, or you just never want us to worry about undercooking or overcooking your food, You can simply select your type of meat, choose your desired doneness, and this air fryer will handle the rest using a smart algorithm to perfectly cook your protein.

[08:49] But if you want a little bit more control, you can also just pick your cooking temperature, and the probe will give you that real-time internal temperature reading, which I used for every sandwich in this video, and I certainly relied on it for that last sandwich. I was not screwing that one up.

[09:03] So if you're looking for an air fryer that's PFAS-free, easy to clean, super easy to use, and packed with awesome features, be sure to check out the tasty smart ceramic air fryer using the link below. All right, my friends, we've made it to $25, and this is where things get very serious.

[09:18] Because we can stop just focusing on stretching the budget, and we can start focusing a little bit more on ingredient quality. For $25, I could afford myself some really nice, freshly ground beef from my local butcher to make a burger.

[09:32] Which I guess isn't a sandwich, it's a burger. But you know, tomato, tomato. Actually, speaking of tomatoes, this burger is not getting one, because currently the tomatoes are growing very well, but we're still a good month away from a fresh slicer.

[09:46] So instead of all the classic fresh burger toppings we gonna lean a little more into a richer burger And since the whole point of this challenge is to use the air fryer as much as possible I wanted to find a way to work it in more than just cooking the burger in there So I making a batch of crispy onions So I slice up one yellow onion nice and fine

[10:04] and I'm going to remove the tray from the air fryer, and I'll throw the onions in there, and I'm just going to give them a little bit of oil and a little salt. Doesn't need much. And I'm cooking these at a very low heat, around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. You just want to give them a

[10:16] tossed every now and then to help them cook evenly. And you should get a final product similar to crispy onion strings, which will add a ton of flavor and texture to this burger. But of course, just crispy onions as a topping is not enough to carry this burger. We need a good sauce,

[10:30] so I'm simply going to whip together a quick burger sauce with some mayo, mustard, and ketchup, and a little bit of homemade pickle relish. Now, I use the ring mold to form the burgers nice and evenly, and then I just press them out a little bigger than the bun diameter, because they are

[10:45] gonna shrink when we are air fried and I gave them a nice seasoning of salt and pepper on both sides. Now I'm going to use the temperature probe to monitor these burgers as they cook and then I'm gonna cook them at the highest temperature this air fryer goes at 450 degrees to give them that really nice sear.

[11:15] I'll see ya. Come on. I don't give a shit. All right, here we go. You want to take a slice?

[11:27] Yeah, I could have gone up a few degrees. I'm, like, realizing 125 is rare. 135 is good beef. The best beef you can... Yeah.

[11:40] If we didn't have the tomatoes in season, I just kept the... Yeah, less is more with a burger. I think it's cooked perfectly. You like that? Yeah.

[11:52] I don't have a lot of experience. No, no. You like to cry about that? This is a noise-based. I'll go with this. That sounds way more good. Yeah. Would you take $20 for that? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[12:04] 100%. You'd be. Yeah. You can get a hamburger for $20. That's true. Yeah. You need a lot of cooking skills, though. Mm. All right. The budget is doubling once again to $50, which means we're probably entering uncharted air fryer territory.

[12:20] We're talking about ingredients that certainly have never touched my air fryer and probably no air fryer that has ever been in existence. Because we are making lobster rolls, which just felt like the right fit at that $50 budget.

[12:34] Now I did consider buying whole fresh lobster, but cooking the whole lobster in the air fryer just felt like a challenge for a separate video. So I stuck with just tails which seemed like a much safer bet.

[12:46] Then to prep them I simply trimmed away those fins and some of that membrane along the sides of the shell to expose a little bit more meat. And after that it was a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. And remember that frozen compound butter trick from last video?

[12:59] Well I couldn't think of a better place to use it. So I sliced up a cube into a few chunks and made them directly on top of that exposed lobster meat. And these tails were off to the air fryer. I might be the first person to ever cook lobsters on an air fryer.

[13:13] Breaking barriers, my friends. And we've got one shot at that. That's for damn sure. That was 400. It started 10 minutes. But really, once I plug this in, I'm going to go off the internal 10.

[13:25] Once that hits about 135, I'm pulling it. All right, here we go. Whoa. Oh, curled up in there. It smells amazing.

[13:39] Now, when it comes to classic lobster rolls, you really have the two main camps. The Connecticut-style lobster roll, which is served warm with melted butter, and the Maine lobster roll, which is dressed up with a light mayo-based sauce.

[13:52] Now, I personally sampled both of these in different New England spots, and they are both delicious, but I prefer the main style because it has a little bit more flavor, which is what we're going to go for for this lobster roll. So I grabbed whatever fresh herbs were looking good in the garden.

[14:06] I gave them a rough chop, mixed them in with some mayo, some lemon juice, a little salt and pepper. Boom, you've got your dressing. And once the lobster was cool enough to handle, I popped the meat out of the shell. I gave it a rough chop and just gently folded everything together.

[14:20] And I could have made some homemade rolls for this. I have done that in a prior sandwich series episode. But trust me, after the final recipe, you'll see why I was just capped out of homemade bread baking. But I did go right to the source and picked up some proper New England split top rolls.

[14:36] I buttered up both sides and I toasted them right in the air fryer until they were golden brown. Then it was finally time to bring everything together. I started with some fresh lettuce leaves that I picked straight from my garden followed by the lobster mixture Then I topped it off with some homemade pickle relish and sprinkled on some finely sliced up green onions All right here we go Carly not here for this tasting because she actually allergic to shellfish

[14:58] I'll be rating this one. Mmm. Mmm. I've had a lobster roll since I went to Maine, I think like six years ago, three children. It's just such a burst of freshness, this sandwich.

[15:11] I mean, it's a lobster salad on a hot dog bun, so not a sandwich at all, but close enough. So the question is, is it worth the price point at 50? I think if you're not living in a place where there is a ton of lobster around,

[15:24] you're kind of getting ripped off a little bit. Lobster can be so expensive, so I can't say the value is actually worth the final dollar. All right, so I have to admit something to you before we move into this last sandwich. This one makes me feel a little bit like a YouTube seller.

[15:37] I bought myself some proper A5 Wagyu because we are making the Wagyu Katsu Sando. And I ordered this A5 Wagyu beef strip loin steak online from the Wagyu shop. And it's the real deal, my friends.

[15:49] I mean, this thing comes with like a whole bar certificate and a whole origin story. And at this price point for this one steak, we have entered the highest possible rating of Wagyu at A5. And this is truly some insane marbling happening with this piece of meat right here.

[16:03] But before we get into the Wagyu prep, let's just here's to the bread, which of course had to be some Japanese milk bread. And there's really no place to pick one of these up around me, so I had to take matters into my own hand and go full bakery mode.

[16:15] And just like the bun from earlier, this bread starts with the tangzhong, but the dough is going to be much richer. We've got some sugar in here, and we're using milk instead of water. And once the dough starts coming together in the mixer, it also gets a generous amount of butter.

[16:29] Now the dough gets proofed until it doubles in size. Then I'm going to split it into four even pieces. And I'll shape them into balls and I'll let them rest before shaping them into my final loaf.

[16:59] Alright, geez, enough bread content already. Let's move into this Wagyu press. So I was able to get two beautiful pieces out of this steak and I'm gonna use the trim pieces for a few test runs in the air fryer so don't f*** this up too bad and

[17:13] they'll also make some delicious snacks. Now I ran the Wagyu through a standard three-step breading process finishing it off with a coating of some panko bread crumbs and for the final two elements I have this homemade tostu sauce which is

[17:25] basically a Japanese barbecue sauce and simply some very finely shaved raw green cabbage, which is going to give this insanely rich sandwich some much needed freshness. All right, I got one shot at this.

[17:38] I'm going to pop a thermometer right in the core. We'll give it a nice even spray on one side, spray on the other side. Pop it in. Set it for 430, 10 minutes. But what's really important is I'm just going to watch with that thing.

[17:53] I did a few different tests here, the scrap pieces. This was more like a 120, 125. This was like 110, 115. I think I'm going to go on the lower end. All right, we're done.

[18:06] See? Oh, yeah. This is a dense, thick sandwich right there. It's good we're splitting this.

[18:19] Here we go. It's pretty, like, buttery when I cut through. which is a good sign. Oh yes, I like that a lot. It's not like, holy, rare, rare, rare, like you see sometimes,

[18:32] but for my test I didn't want it too rare. This is a one meat sandwich. This is a crazy breakfast too. First bite of the day. All right, all right, all right.

[18:44] Mmm, whoa. Holy . The meat is right. Because I do feel like if you undercook it more, it's a little more chewy.

[18:58] Oh, my God. I was not. Have you ever had? No. Cooper? I've only had this the last time I made it. Oh, my gosh. And this is a much better version.

[19:11] All right. You're welcome. The texture of the meat is so, it's just, it's like, yeah, like butter. Yeah, it's fat. cheese just like sinks through it

[19:23] but is it better than the one dollar grilled cheese so pretty close so is it worth two hundred fifty dollars no I mean it's good

[19:37] but I wouldn't say that this is the production budget yeah but it's good there you go please