Vegetables
Brussels sprouts
The vegetable air frying rehabilitates: halved and browned rather than boiled to sulphur.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
A sprout is layered leaves around a dense core, so heat has to travel through a thick, low-moisture structure. Halving exposes the core and gives a flat cut face that browns, and the browning is what converts the sulphurous compounds people dislike into something sweeter. The loose outer leaves are the risk: they are thin and dry and will char to bitterness at the temperature the core needs.
Why the cut matters
Sprouts are a dense little cabbage and behave like one. Halving them is not optional — a whole sprout in an air fryer chars on the outside while the core stays raw, which is the same failure as a boiled one in reverse.
Cooking pages
- Brussels sprouts, halved — Fresh sprouts get twenty to twenty-four minutes at 180°C in one manufacturer's table; two others print eight to fifteen minutes at 200°C for halved ones without naming a state.
- Whole Brussels sprouts — One manufacturer grills 600g of whole sprouts for twelve to sixteen minutes, against eight to ten for halved ones in its air-fry chart; it does not say fresh or frozen.
This page gives no cooking answer of its own. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. Any figure mentioned above is one manufacturer’s, and the page for the cut says which machine, quantity and state it was printed for, or that the manufacturer named no state.