Air Fryer Cookbook Review: The Air Fryer Bible

Welcome back air fryer fanatics, we are back in the world of air fryer cookbooks. A new and exciting world (if you know where to look!). Today, we look at and review “The Air Fryer Bible”, a cookbook with quite a claim to fame. I mean anything giving itself the “bible” tag has big boots to fill! Lets see if they can fill them!

Before we start, I want to make two points clear. In this review, I am using the Kindle version of the cookbook. Also, I believe in real reviews. I actually own and have used this cookbook before reviewing it. Whenever you see a reviews on my site, you will know it is an honest and real one!

With all that out of the way, let’s get on with the review!

Who is Susan Laborde?

Apparently, she is the creator of a website called The Healthy Kitchen Shop, and hails from Louisiana. Susan also wrote another air fryer cookbook called “The complete vegan air fryer cookbook”. As my sister is a vegan, I will have to check this out at some point. Actually, when I have the time I want to do a series on vegan air fryer cookbooks! (So, don’t expect it any time soon!!).

Presentation

As usual, let’s open up the review with the presentation of this cookbook. It terms of the Kindle version, there is nothing to report. Everything works smoothly and as intended.

In my opinion, the design within this cookbook gets the job done, but is nothing spectacular. The formatting is nice without blowing me away in any way. They have a nice key at the start of each recipe to highlight such things as “gluten free” or “kid pleaser”. Firstly, I don’t like how they mix all these words together, so I saw one “kid pleaser vegetarian”. They should separate out the different tags, and better still have a different colour and/or icon for each one. Also, there is no reference to these tags in the recipe contents page. This would have been handy for quick reference.

What I do like is the large amount of photos, all of which are high quality and entice me to try cooking the recipes! This is definitely the highlight of the cookbooks presentation. I do feel that as the book gets past the first few sections, the number of photos does seem to slowly reduce! Would have been nice to keep the picture ratio up throughout the whole cookbook.

So, we are off to a solid start, but nothing exactly setting the world alight!

Content

At 256 pages, this cookbook is up there as one of the longer ones I have reviewed so far.  Let’s take a peek at the table of contents.

For something named the “Air Fryer Bible”, this cookbook is not top of the class for the information it gives on air fryers, but it is definitely up there.

There is some decent advice for new air fryer users, such as giving advice for the dreaded smoking air fryer problem. Also, don’t miss the air fryer buying guide and temperature conversion chart at the back of the book (something I nearly did).

I do like the fact that this cookbook has a section explaining the common ingredients used in the recipes. This is something you often see in regular cookbooks, but for some reason I haven’t seen it much in air fryer cookbooks.

The only thing is that most of these advice sections consist of simple blocks of text. Would have been nice to see some diagrams or info graphics to break up the text. 

I would have not chosen to add the word “bible” to this cookbook, as I think it raises people’s expectations about the details within. Although the informational content here is solid and informative, it is not really that detailed and misses out some areas a buyer of a “bible” might expect. Such as there being no mention of the best way to clean your air fryer or the types of oil best used in an air fryer. 

Recipes

This is the undoubted strong point of this cookbook, and many people will enjoy this cookbook for this very reason. For all my minor nick picking over the informational sections, if the recipes are good a lot of that will pretty much go out the window.

The variety of recipes in this book is excellent. Pretty much any type of food you could want is included, including desserts. I really liked the idea of the “just for fun” section at the end of the recipes. This was a really original and great idea! The only slight downside is that this variety is not extended to the countries inspiring the food. It is mostly made up of American and Mexican style food, with a few others thrown in here and there!

When deciding on the first recipe to try, I was immediately grabbed by the scotch egg recipe, something I really wasn’t expecting in an air fryer cookbook. I am from England, and love scotch eggs with a passion. 

This is what the cookbook thought my scotch eggs should look like….

My results with this recipe were pretty good, after following exactly what was asked of me. The panko breadcrumbs gave a slightly different style of coating to a traditional scotch egg, but it still worked well. The recipe instructions just said to spray the coated eggs before cooking, I assume with the oil mister mentioned! The recipe also says to turn the eggs, which is great for ensuring an even cooking texture.

Would I cook these again? Yes, I would. But, my air fryer needs a tad less cooking time, as my egg yolks were slightly too hard. Nothing disastrous, and this is just down to the strength of my particular air fryer. Is the panko breadcrumb texture after air frying exactly the same as a deep fried alternative? No, it isn’t. But I am used to the texture of air fried foods, and I actually quite like it now.

Now let’s peruse the cookbook to find our next target!!

Turkey burgers sound good, right? I love cooking beef burgers in my air fryer, and have pretty much got it down to a fine art. So why not have a go with a (supposedly) healthier option of turkey burgers.

The recipe is pretty simple and easy to follow. I was able to run through the process of cooking these turkey burgers in short order. I can see this being a great option for a quick air fryer lunch or dinner in the future!

One thing I enjoyed with these turkey burgers, was the use of red onions. It gave a different taste to the burgers, which I really liked. After following the recipe word by word I ended up with a couple of really tasty burgers. They are not as juicy as beef burgers, so maybe next time I would see if I could marinate the turkey burgers to get a slightly juicier end result. This is a technique I found works great with chicken strips, and would be interested to see what it does here.

Is The Air Fryer Bible any good?

If we just ignore the name of “The Air Fryer Bible”, this is actually a valuable addition to anyone’s air fryer cookbook library. It is not my top air fryer cookbook, but I could see it being in my top 5 quite easily. Yes, there are some missteps with this cookbook, but the selection of recipes more than makes up for this and some more!

In terms of whether this is a healthy cookbook or not, they explain in the introduction that it will be a mixture of normal recipes and more health focused ones. So, sometimes you will see them go for low fat or light ingredients in their recipes. I wouldn’t say that the healthy aspect is a major selling point of this cookbook.

Do you have experience with this cookbook? If so, we would love to hear all about it in the comments section below