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. Two manufacturers print around twelve minutes at 200°C without saying whether the florets are fresh or frozen, roughly double what they print for broccoli, and the difference is entirely about density.
Cooking pages
- Cauliflower florets — Fresh florets get twenty-two to twenty-six minutes at 180°C in one manufacturer's table; two others print nine to twelve minutes at 200°C without naming a state.
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.