Air Fryer Cookbook Review: Air Fry Every Day

Welcome back air frying groupies!! We are at it again, reviewing another air fryer cookbook. I have been literally buried under them for a while, and would like to enlighten you about the good ones! Today, we look at and review another underrated cookbook called “Air Fry Every Day” by Ben Mims. I don’t know why this cookbook is criminally underrated, but it is! Let’s get into the nitty gritty!

Who is Ben Mims?

You might be wondering who the author is of this air fryer cookbook. Ben is certainly no stranger to cookbooks, having already produced a couple. One is a dessert cookbook called “sweet and southern”, whilst the other is a collection of short form cookbooks called “Coconut”. Hopefully, this experience will help Ben make an excellent air fryer cookbook too. His interest in sweet treats gets me hoping he will include desserts in this cookbook! 

Other than his cookbook experience, Ben appears to have been in the cookery writing and magazine editor field too! So my hopes are already high for his air frying offering.

Presentation

First, lets look at the presentation. Please bear in mind that I reviewed this cookbook using the Kindle version (as I often do). I had no issues with this version, with all the formatting and page design seemingly well adjusted or converted to Kindle.

Other than this consideration, I have to say that Air Fry Every Day comes across as one of the highest quality air fryer cookbooks I have tried so far. 

The design of the pages is exceptional, giving me a real feeling similar to the high quality printed cookbooks I have seen over the years. It almost has a magazine style design, with different boxes within the page explaining different nuggets of information. 

The photos used in this cookbook are also some of the best I have seen in any cookbook, adding a lively and engaging feeling to the recipes and other content in the cookbook.

All in all, I would say a real stellar job has been done on the design and presentation with this cookbook!

Content

Air Fry Every Day seems to continue the home run it started in the presentation section of this review! It starts with one of the most in depth and well explained introductions I have seen in an air fryer cookbook to date. OK, it is a bit like a wall of text at times, but the content is stellar.

Here’s a quick look at the contents page of this cookbook:

The author then dives into his air fryer 101, an incredibly detailed walk through of everything a new air fryer user would want in a cookbook. From air fryer buying tips to whether you should pre-heat your air fryer, it is all contained on this 101 section. I especially liked the tips on how to convert cooking instructions for pre-made frozen food into air fryer cooking times!

The experiences the author conveys in this section pretty much matches the experiences I have had, so it gives me the feeling that he has really taken the time to get to know his air fryer. For example, a lot of people blindly tell you to pre-heat your air fryer, when (for most models) pre-heating is not a necessity. This author doesn’t fall into the same trap! (high five)

The only tips I didn’t see was one related to what to do when white smoke pours out of your air fryer. Maybe his model wasn’t prone to this, but quite a few are. Anyway, you can’t expect him to cover absolutely everything, so I will let this one slide!

Recipes

On to the recipes, my favourite part of every cookbook. The other parts are like a nice bonus, but the recipes are still the main attraction. 

This cookbook has an impressive range of recipes, especially as the actual size of the cookbook is only 160 pages (one of the smaller cook books I have reviewed to date). I really like the selection and range of recipes on offer. There is even a small but tightly written section on cakes and desserts. The book also includes recipes involving pizza and Chinese food. It’s not often I see such variety in an air fryer cookbook!

Now, let’s get on and try some recipes. 

When I first saw triple coconut shrimps, I knew that would be a good recipe for me to try first. I mean, who doesn’t love the idea of coconut shrimps. In our household, shrimps are usually stir fried with chili and garlic, so it will be a nice change!

The author must love these coconut shrimps too, as the picture below is also featured on the cookbooks front cover!!

The process of cooking the coconut shrimp went pretty smoothly. As expected, it tells you to spray some oil on the shrimps before you cook them. They also opted for panko breadcrumbs, something a lot of people prefer in an air fryer, as it is usually easier to crisp up. I followed the recipe to the letter, and I was impressed with the results.

Although, I would be tempted to soak the shrimp in the coconut milk mixture for longer next time, to see if they could be even more coconuty (is that even a word!!). All in all, an excellent first test! Timings seemed spot on, as I ended up with some nicely crisp shrimp. If you like coconut shrimp, you will love these!

I also really liked the “go basic” section at the end of the recipe (seen above). It shows that the author has gone that little bit extra, to provide you with extra ideas and alternatives for the recipe. What a great and helpful feature of this cookbook.

On to recipe 2! And this time I decided to go for the salmon. Tandoori spiced salmon and potatoes to be exact. I love any Indian spiced food, and well cooked salmon is food from the gods. Did you know that hundreds of years ago salmon was thought of as a common food for peasants!! Crazy!!

You can see the start of this recipe below:

The thing that stuck out to me when reading this recipe, was the idea of part cooking the potatoes first, then placing the salmon on top of the potatoes to cook. What a genius idea! The other thing that is good is the fact that this recipe is so quick and simple.

Below is what this recipe should look like (again, this cookbook has awesome photos!)

My own result wasn’t quite as nicely blackened as in the picture, but was not that far off. The taste was simply amazing, and I loved how some of the salmon flavour had literally rubbed off on the potatoes. This is how great cooking should be, quick and simple. Those of you that read this website often, will know I worry about air flow a lot! I did wonder if putting the salmon on the potatoes would ruin my air flow enough to stop the food cooking well?? Actually, I shouldn’t have worried, as it turned out brilliantly.

So, is Air Fry Every Day Any Good?

After reading this review, I think you can tell that I really like this air fryer cookbook. It is well designed and formatted, with excellent (well researched) advice, coupled with top quality recipes! In my opinion, I would rank this right near the top of my air fryer cookbook library. Amazingly, I saw some pretty negative customer reviews online, saying this and that is wrong with the cookbook. It seems that these people don’t know a good cookbook when they see one! Or they have unreasonable expectations of what should be included!

This is the sleeper hit among air fryer cookbooks! Mark my words 🙂

This book doesn’t claim to be healthy, and it lives up to this (lack of) claim. So, if you are looking for light or lean recipes, don’t look here.

If you have any experiences with this cookbook yourself, we would love to hear all about it in the comments section below.