Hello and welcome to Mashable's Air Friday. I am culture reporter Tim Martin.
And on air Friday, we air fry just about anything and everything in
the name of deliciousness. This week we are air frying.
Smash Brussel sprouts.
So this recipe.
Like a lot of our recipes on air, Friday comes from nowhere else but tick tock where
the air fryer is king and it comes from Jackie Hartlaub,
a.k.a.
low carb state of mind, who is a very,
very popular TikTok creator and air fryer.
So we're making smash brussel sprouts kind of in the style of a smashed small potato.
You've probably seen that recipe where you boil a small potato,
you take it, you smash it down with something heavy and then you
fry it till it's real crisp. We're going to do that with Brussels sprouts today
in the air fryer. Now I've already started prepping a little bit of
the recipe, but what Jacqui says to do is you cut the ends off of
Brussels sprouts like so and then take off the outer leaves.
I've got a few more here to do just to kind of demonstrate for you at home.
So I use quick chop right off, take off the leaves that are probably going to fall
off in the air fryer because you want it to be one intact piece and you're prepped,
obviously.
Wash your Brussels sprouts before you do this, and it's pretty easy,
you know,
to chop the end off, take off those leaves,
put them in a bowl. So the next step after that is really easy.
You're going to take this bowl a microwave safe bowl of Brussels sprouts.
Put a little bit of water in it. Cover it and microwave for four minutes.
That's according to Jackie. That'll get them nice and soft.
So then you can smash them and toss them in.
The air fryer or Brussels sprouts have had four minutes in the microwave,
steaming with water and then a plate on top. They were very hot coming out.
I'm a little skeptical to see if they'll smash after just four minutes in the microwave.
Well,
let's try.
Also, the Mashable office now has a nice,
steamed brussel sprouts smell to it, which I'm sure my coworkers love.
So the way Jacqui did it in her TikTok was, you take the bowl that you see in them when you put it
down.
Give it a nice, hard press and color me surprised that worked
perfectly.
So you've got a nice little disc that will air fry up really nice.
Really crispy. I have my brussel sprouts all smashed.
They're a little bit soggy from their microwave adventure.
So I'm going to take some paper towels and just kind of dry them off.
The less moisture you have, the better chance that you're going to have a crispy
end product, which is what we're going for here.
We're going to load them up, spray them with some nonstick and put a little bit
of oil on them.
And she just use garlic salt, which is one of my favorites,
too.
We're going to let that go for about 10 minutes and then crank the heat up to get a really crispy at the
end. But we'll get to that.
So we've got a preheated air fryer, we're going to load them up like so.
So we got all that loaded up nicely to give it a good spray.
Take some garlic salt.
Load it up, and now we're going to do a quick flip,
get both sides spray. Do a little bit of oil.
And Greg Salt. We're going to load that up,
we're going to let it go for 10 minutes, probably flip about halfway through and then get a
nice and crispy at the end.
And, Rob,
so it's now time to flip a key point that I might have messed up earlier reading comprehension is key,
folks.
It's 10 minutes per side and then you crank the heat up at the end,
so you got to let the one side go for 10 minutes.
Flip it, give another 10 to 11 minutes.
Just keep an eye on it at two seventy five, and then we're going to crank it up to 350 to get it
really crisp in the end.
This one side's been going for about 10 minutes, so you can see they're starting to cook.
So we're just going to flip them. So the non end side is up now.
It is a little tough to make sure you keep all of the Brussels sprouts together.
So again, try to be gentle if you look here,
if you see this one.
The camera's getting that it kind of came apart because I was an idiot and flipped it too hard to try
to be gentle.
Once it gets nice and crispy, it's going to stay together better.
So we're going to give it ten minutes on this side.
At 275, you're going to put it to 11,
just so you have a little bit of extra time if we need it.
Once that's done, we're going to crank the heat up for 10 minutes to get
a nice increase.
So the Brussels sprouts have been going at 275 for about 20 minutes,
10 minutes on each side now. I'm going to pull them out,
take a quick look, and we're just going to crank the heat up,
Jackie's recipe said to crank it up to 350.
But honestly, you're just roasting vegetables.
You can't really go wrong. Crank it up as high as you want to keep an eye on them.
Once a nice and super crisp,
they're going to be done.
So first thing's first, we take a look at it so you can see they're starting to
get crisp, starting to look pretty good.
So I'm going to put them back in. I'm not really going to disturb them.
I'm going to leave them like that. We can put them back in.
I'm going to turn the heat way up.
Let's do 360, and we're going to do a time of ten more minutes.
So the Brussels sprouts have been going for another 10 minutes.
Hopefully now we have perfectly done flattened, smushed Brussels sprouts.
So let's see, we take it out here.
I got to say that looks pretty much exactly like the tick tock that it came from.
Nice and crispy. I'm going to take.
Let's just dump them. I'm going to dump them out.
It looks pretty good.
Now, granted,
these are going to be very hot, but in the name of science,
I'm going to try one for you now. So the outside feels pretty crisp.
If you look here, Mr. Crisp on the outside,
the inside feels like it's well done and soft.
It's really good.
I mean, the answer is crisp,
the inside, you're still kind of getting that steamed brussel
sprouts because that's how you cooked it through at the beginning.
That's not as pleasant as a Brussels sprout that you're just roasting the whole time.
But the nice, flat texture of the nice flat shape means you get
nice texture all around and really, really crispy outside.
So it's a very good recipe. I'll probably make this again real tasty.