Fruit
Melon
Four to six minutes for spears, and it works better than it sounds.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
Melon is the highest-water food in this catalogue by some distance, which is precisely why it is grilled rather than air-fried: dry moving air would take an hour to make any impression, whereas contact with a hot plate caramelises the surface sugars in a couple of minutes before the water in the flesh has time to matter. The flesh warms and slackens slightly and the surface takes on a savoury edge. It is a surface treatment; anything longer simply turns the spear to liquid.
Why the cut matters
Melon on direct heat is the most surprising row in the fruit chart and it is a real published figure: spears of ten to fifteen centimetres, pressed onto the plate, four to six minutes.
Cooking pages
- Grilled melon spears — Four to six minutes for 10-15cm spears, pressed onto the plate.
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.