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If you’re looking for beautiful food photos, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Here, we show you exactly how your food will look when cooked by an average Joe (in this case, me. Six years clear of university, living alone for three). As you can see by that description, you know you’re going to get bog-standard, weekday dinners from our cooking articles.
After recently gaining a Ninja Crispi air fryer, I decided to give it a trial run with one of my midweek staples: a jacket potato.
The Ninja Crispi is supplied with a handy booklet containing recipes for all sorts of vegetables, meats, and fish dishes, as well as cooking times for individual items.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any guidance on a jacket potato. I figured the closest setting to how I would bake a potato in the oven and a solid 40 minutes on the timer would do. My logic being I could always take it out early or add time if necessary, and air fryers are known to cook food quicker than a traditional oven (where we usually cook a jacket for two hours).
Setting up the Ninja Crispi Air Fryer
Armed with my medium sized spud (washed, no oil), I added the cripser tray to the small container. This was too shallow and the Crispi wouldn’t lock in place. For reference, the small container is one cheese toastie deep (with the crisper plate in place).
The larger, 3.8l container fit the potato perfectly; if I had friends then this container would easily fit up to 3 more medium potatoes.
As per the Ninja Crispi instructions, I constructed the Crispi. The large crisper plate in place, I added the spud (washed, no oil, with a small skin-deep score on the top), then popped on the large container adapter.
I clicked on the Crispi, selected the ‘Roast’ function, and upped the time to 40 minutes. One press on the + increased the time by one minute, and since it started at 10 minutes, I was keen to see if the timer would fast forward in any way. A long press seemed to jump five minutes, but I might’ve just been seeing things.
Pressed ‘Start’ and my raw potato was off, beginning it’s journey to becoming a beautifully, crispy skinned jacket with fluffy insides.
Cooking the jacket potato
The Ninja Crispi instruction booklet advises turning your food mid-cook, so after 24 minutes (I missed the 25 minute mark due to some interesting telly), I used a pair of silicone tongs and flipped my spud over.
The skin felt well on its way to crispy under my tongs.
40 minutes later
At the 40 minute mark, I tested the firmness by gently pushing a sharp knife through the top. The skin made a nice crackle and the potato was soft… until the knife hit the centre. The centre remained very slightly raw. A 40 minute roast wasn’t enough to cook my medium-sized potato all the way through.
Seeing as there wasn’t much potato left to cook, I decided to finish the jacket off with a 10 minute air fry.
Air fry mode selected and 10 minutes on the timer, the Crispi was back to cooking.
It’s worth noting that, in my flat where the lounge and kitchen are the same room, I didn’t need to turn the TV up when the Crispi was in action, I could still hear the 1% Club perfectly fine at normal volume.
The finished jacket potato
The 10 minute air fry finished the jacket potato off nicely. Soft all the way through with a very naughty sounding crunch when the knife passed through the skin.
Cut in half with a serrated knife, it looked just how it would if I’d have used the oven.
I prefer not to have my jacket potato plain, so I mashed the inside with a healthy helping of butter, and topped with a pre-filling layer of cheese.
Of course, to turn it into a hearty dinner, the jacket was topped off with some spicy fajita made with leftover roast beef, and a final layer of cheese. And as promised, some realistic home cooked photography.
The Crispi made a jacket potato dinner a far quicker process from raw potato to plated than using a traditional oven. In all, it took 50 minutes, my oven takes over an hour and a half for the same thing.
Would I cook a jacket potato in the Ninja Crispi Air Fryer again?
Yes.
Four medium potatoes would be the limit, so if you’re a family of up to four, you could use the Ninja Crispi for your spuds. If you’re using large potatoes or cooking for five or more, you might find that the oven is more suitable.
