Vegetables
Mushrooms
The fastest vegetable here, as long as they are not crowded.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
A mushroom is a sponge of around ninety per cent water held in a protein structure that contracts sharply when heated. In moving air it expels that water fast, and if the air can carry it away the mushroom browns and concentrates; if it cannot, the mushroom sits and boils in its own liquid. That is the whole difference between a good air-fried mushroom and a grey one, and it is decided by how many are in the basket rather than by time or temperature.
Why the cut matters
Mushrooms are the quickest vegetable in the catalogue, at around five minutes on a chart that names no state, and the one where crowding does the most damage, because what they release is water and there is a lot of it.
Cooking pages
- Mushroom slices — Fresh mushrooms get sixteen to twenty minutes at 180°C in one manufacturer's table; two others print five and ten minutes at 200°C without naming a state.
- Portobello mushrooms — Fresh whole portobello mushrooms get ten to twelve minutes at 180°C in one manufacturer's chart; its grill chart for another machine names no state.
- Dried mushroom slices — Fresh mushrooms get six to eight hours at 60°C in one manufacturer's chart, which says not to wash them.
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.