In our trips to the bin store, we kept encountering silicone liners for air fryers. After seeing them, I suggested to my wife that maybe we should get an air fryer to see what all the hype was about. She found one on the local “buy nothing” site and picked it up (free is a good price for trying something out).

The first thing we made was French fries (pre cut, frozen ones from Trader Joes) and they turned out pretty well. We made them a number of times then we asked ourselves, what next? We can’t just have a dedicated French fry maker.

Last year and this year, my son and I are staffing a Scout training event and since he is vegetarian, he basically gets special food. Last year I was working in the kitchen, so I made tofu for him (and a few others). As the kitchen at the training has a convection oven, I thought I’d try out some recipes at home. The air fryer could mimic a convection oven (sort of), so I found some air fryer tofu recipes. The prep work was a bit time consuming, but the tofu tasted good and was enjoyed by the whole family. The problem with our little air fryer was that it could only cook about half a slab of tofu in it and we make 2 slabs of tofu for the family. This meant that cooking took awhile.

It finally dawned on me that our oven has a convection mode! We’ve had the oven for almost 12 years and we never used that mode. Using the convection oven to “air fry” the tofu has been easy and delightful. I put the tofu on a metal rack on a backing sheet and I can cook all the tofu in one fell swoop (I flip it over mid way through). It takes about 45 minutes to make the tofu a bit crispy.

If you haven’t tried marinated tofu cooked in a convection oven, I’d definitely recommend it! We typically put it on a salad and it is one of the only meals that my son will go back for seconds.