Fruit
Melon
A few minutes for spears on direct heat, 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, with no state named.
Cooking pages
- Grilled melon spears — One manufacturer grills six melon spears of 10–15cm for four to six minutes; 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.