Vegetables
Cauliflower
Takes browning better than any other brassica, and dries out if you let it.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
A cauliflower floret is denser and drier than a broccoli one, with a thick stem and a tightly packed head that has little surface area for its mass. That makes it slower and much more forgiving: it browns and caramelises across its cut faces before it burns, where broccoli's fine florets scorch first. The trade is that once its water has gone it becomes chalky rather than tender, so oil on the cut surfaces does real work here.
Why the cut matters
Cauliflower is the vegetable air frying most obviously improves. The published time sits around twelve minutes at 200°C, roughly double broccoli's, and the difference is entirely about density.
Cooking pages
- Cauliflower florets — Twelve minutes at 200°C — double broccoli's time, from the same chart.
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.