Vegetables
Broccoli
A vegetable with two textures on one floret, which is why it chars before it softens.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
A floret is a dense stalk topped by a fine, high-surface-area head. The head has almost no thermal mass and chars in minutes; the stalk is solid and needs several times as long. Air frying rewards this shape with excellent flavour — the charred florets are the point — but only if the stalk is cut down to something that finishes at the same time.
Why the cut matters
Broccoli is the vegetable most people try first in an air fryer and the one that most often comes out with blackened tips and a raw stalk. That is a geometry problem rather than a cooking-time problem.
Cooking pages
- Broccoli florets — Charred heads and raw stalks — a cutting problem dressed up as a cooking problem.
There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.