Air Fryer Hasselback Potatoes

have you seen those beautiful accordion looking potatoes that we call hasselback potatoes and wondered how in the world are those made well today i'm going to show you how to cut them and how to air fry them they are super easy much easier than you might imagine welcome to the salted pepper where we cook for real life using real food and we keep it real simple and today's recipe may not seem simple because it looks so fancy i mean they're beautiful hasselbeck potatoes are absolutely gorgeous and i was always intimidated to make them because i thought oh no i'm going to cut right through the potato it's not going to look like that but surprisingly they are very easy to do and i'm going to show you step by step how to do it first thing you want to do is pick out your potatoes now the size doesn't really matter it's more about the shape and that they're even and close in shape if you're going to do multiple potatoes and that is so they all cook evenly okay so what i have here is two russet potatoes these are about nine ounce potatoes so somewhere between eight and nine ounces is perfect for the timing and temperature in this recipe if you want to go up to the really big one pound ones you're going to need to adjust your temperature and your timing and i'll go over that a little bit later in the video so you can also see that these are pretty uniformly shaped so you want to have your potatoes you know as uniform as you can get them so if they're bumpy or have like little divots in them skip by those for the hasselback potatoes um it's going to make it a lot harder to cut if if they're all uneven so these are pretty good then you just need to get two butter knives or you could use chopsticks but i found that using the end the thick end of a butter knife was easier for me now i'm gonna warn you though when i go to cut these potatoes if you have any sensitivity with your hearing you might want to turn the volume down because you will hear that click of the knife on the metal okay so i just wanted to uh pass that along because it can be really annoying for some people all right so you're going to set your potato in between the two butter knifes like this bring them close to the potato now what happens sometimes with the ends of the potato especially this little tapered end is it's up a little bit more so if i went straight through to slice and went down to the butter knife it would cut through the potato i know this because i've done it about 25 times i've tested this recipe a lot so don't do that there's two ways you could do it you can move your potato down so that it is touching and then you can use your butter knife as a guide but what i usually do is i don't bother with that i just go three quarters of the way through now watch me watch me i'm gonna probably cut through it again it's okay it's no big deal if you do okay you just have an end that's cut off it's no big deal all right so you want thin slices all the way around or all the way across your potato i should say so i try to make them about an eighth to a quarter inch and i try to make them uniform so if you're not comfortable doing those close together slices you can do them a little bit bigger but try to make them uniform so that your potato cooks evenly because the thinner the slice the more it's going to cook on the top at especially the top the bottom still connected so we'll get to that in a minute because that's what caused so much problems with me air frying the hasselbacks the bottom was not getting done and the top was getting too done and i didn't want to tell you that she had to cook this for two hours at a low temperature so i've made a discovery though and that's why i have two appliances out here because i'm going to share that with you in just a minute all right so let's go ahead and start cutting so i just take my knife and you do want a sharp knife and i go down about three quarters of the way and then i go to the next one and i do this manually for about an inch of the potato okay then when i get here i use my knife my uh butter knife as a guide i hope i'm not i might not quite be there yet let me do one more slice manually you could do it there we go all right so now you see how it clicks there and it clicks and it clicks now we're in business now watch your fingers okay so what i just did it's no big deal if you do this i do it almost every time is i sliced it starting here but have my knife at an angle so it's sliced through and actually cut off this potato i just stick it right back in i usually test that one for doneness all right and we're just gonna keep going here again the thinner the slices the better but don't be too worried about that i just did it again it's okay don't worry all right keep going uh so don't i just did it again oh my gosh now that's a record i've never done three in one potato but anyway go figure all right so once i get about now i did four in one potato just shove it right back in there once i get to about this side i flip it over because i can hold on here a little bit safer so i just flip it over and do the same thing now this end is a little bit thicker so it goes down so let's see can i use it the knives as a guide right now i don't want to cut it off no not quite but right there i can okay watch your fingers oops five that is definitely a record all right and then when i get right here i really try to pull my fingers back you know and we've got one more slice to make and just go right through there we go six so i did six that came out now i could take these out that would actually give me more room for these to open up so that's an option too but i'm just gonna leave them in for this okay now that is how you cut your hasselback so on the underside it's completely intact but here we've got these nice accordion like slices and what happens is as it air frys and as these like almost like potato chips really i think of these as a cross between a potato chip and a baked potato because when they're done perfectly you can actually pull out a piece and it just breaks off the bottom and it's like eating a crispy potato chip because they get really really nice and crispy all right then totally optional but i suggest it bowl of water cold water soak your potato and i put it upside down and get some of that starch out i soak mine for 30 minutes what that does i feel like anyway i think it cooks it more evenly so i think you have a better end result it's not real starchy you have more of a crisp chip so i like that personally and also it fans out the potato a little bit more so you just have a pretty presentation okay so if you don't want the starch to be removed from your potato because you want more of a baked potato versus a potato chip type of feel then don't soak them you'll be fine just cook them until they're completely done and they'll be delicious all right same thing with the next one all right there we go i only did two of those little half cut potatoes i'm back this one's so little i'm just gonna keep that one out all right go ahead and soak that now in 30 minutes we'll be able to season up our potato and get them in to the air fryer now i have two appliances here because i wanted to show you both ways i know a lot of my audience has the ninja foodie and has especially the newer series with the one smart lid that has steam and crisp technology that was what sort of was a breakthrough in my testing of the hasselback potatoes because what was happening was the tops were beautiful and about three quarters of the way through the potato uh that was all cooked fine but that last quarter piece of the potato was not cooked it was hard and it wasn't pleasing at all and i played around with the temperatures and times but found that in order to get the perfect tassel back potato i had to lower the temperature to like 275 300 and cook it forever and i'm like you know there's got to be a quicker way so one day i had the steam and crisp version of the ninja foodie or i think they call it the pressure cooker and steam fryer and i said well let me steam crisp it amazing that little bit of water and that little bit of steam in the beginning uh helped really cook that bottom part of the potato but did not inhibit the crisping at all so i thought well if i'm going to make an air fryer hasselback potato recipe i can't just have it be able to be done in the ninja foodie because not everybody has one with the one lid and the steam crisp technology so i thought well let me grab my regular airfryer because i think basket style air fryers are pretty normal if you have an air fryer a lot of them are basket styles so what i did was i added some water to the bottom so mine has this is the ninja foodie dual airfryer but any basket airfryer will work mine has a little crisping plate that i like in this recipe especially um but even other recipes because the water sits underneath of it the heat of the uh air fryer steams the water and it worked really well to get that lower portion of the potato cooked perfectly so that's my little secret i add a little bit of water a half of a cup to be exact to the basket now if you don't have a basket style or you don't have a rack like any kind of thing that fits in your air fryer that will hold the potato up above the water because you really don't want it sitting in the water then you can make something with foil that looks like this so i just took a piece of foil made a little rope and then sort of put it around to fit the size potato so what you would do is put your potato right on top like that okay that's gonna raise it up from the water and so it's not sitting right in that liquid okay so that's another little work around and then since i'm using the dual air fryer i figured well this is a good opportunity let me go ahead and make my hasselback potato and a meatloaf on the other side so that's the beauty of this one you can uh change the settings like i'm gonna bake the meatloaf and airfry the hasselback potato and we're gonna have them done at about the same time so that's what's great about this one the other thing you can do is you don't have to just do two potatoes no matter what air fryer you have you can do as few well you know as few as one right or as many as will fit into your air fryer so in this basket i could probably i could probably do i'd probably stick to two or three you know you don't want to crowd your food too much but i pro actually i'd probably stick with two per basket in this one the ninja foodie you could probably do um four if you arrange them on the rack correctly that would be fine all right great so let's let these finish soaking and then i'll make up my meatloaf and we will get everything into airfry so it's been about 30 minutes i mean give or take you don't have to be exact of course you can even leave them in longer if you want and now i'm gonna dry the potato off the reason why i do that is because i like to coat mine with oil i think it helps well definitely helps with the crisping and i also like to put salt on the bottom i put like a coarse kosher salt on the bottom and then i sprinkle the top with more of you know like a regular everyday salt which i use a fine grind sea salt for that so once you have your potato and if these little pieces fall out it's no big deal but you're gonna cut yours better than i did mine i'm sure all right and then i go and i put the potato in the oil rub it around and i get a little messy here because i like to take the oil down in between the layers here to get them coated now you could do this honestly with a pastry brush that's probably what i should have grabbed it'd be a little bit uh cleaner and you could also use a spray bottle if you wanted i'm not sure why i didn't do that because i didn't do it right all right that looks good and now just the bottom i roll bottom and just up the sides a little bit in this uh coarser salt and repeat that for the next potato as well or as many as you're making if you don't get in between each one don't worry about it we're going to baste it midway through cooking anyway so it's not the end of the world you can also skip the oil that's no problem either all right and do the same thing here the reason why i don't cover all of the potato with the coarse salt is because i find that it just gets a little bit too salty so i don't like to do that i'm gonna move this away this was two tablespoons of olive oil so you can use two to three to a quarter cup depending on how many potatoes you're coating and i save that because i'm actually going to add some butter to it and we're going to use a butter olive oil to baste our potatoes so let me go ahead and get my hands washed and then we will get everything into the airfryer all right now i'm just going to put a little bit of salt on the top and so this is a quarter teaspoon and really just put a little bit over so a quarter teaspoon for both is going to be plenty and of course you can put whatever seasonings you want in fact i didn't even use the whole quarter teaspoon but whatever seasonings you want on your potato i mean that's the beauty of the hasselback look i'm gonna show them plain today i'm not gonna top them with a bunch of things but you can top them with anything you like you can make them loaded you know with cheese and bacon and sour cream and all kinds of things you can even put like a nacho cheese sauce or something and maybe some chili and i'll show you how you can pull out individual ones and like they're delicious like a potato a nacho or something oh my gosh so delicious all right i've got my meatloaf ready to go i'm gonna put that into slot one here and into slot two i'm gonna pour in a half of a cup of just regular uh you know room temperature water i'm gonna throw my potato in there and we'll close that up and then the same thing with the ninja i'm gonna use the steam and crisp function on this model if you have a ninja foodie and you want to do it without um you know you don't have this model it's perfectly fine you can do one or two things you can put your half of a cup of water in you can steam for about five minutes and then switch lids and continue on to air crisp that's probably what i would do or you can just go straight to air crisp and just put your water in the bottom kind of like i'm doing here in this airfryer so i'm gonna put the half of a cup in the bottom i have the crisping plate in that's what i'm using here you could use the basket which this model doesn't come with but if you have one you can use that you could use the rack if you want it whatever whatever you like and now i'm just going to put the potato right there in the center and get these down now the timings are going to be a little bit different okay because this model is going to steam and then crisp so what it does is about you know somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes of steam time which will show as preheating on the unit so it's about the same time in total but i'm going to set it a little bit differently so let me go ahead and do that first to go to the steam crisp we go to the center section we're going to turn the ninja foodie on all right so first i'm going to set the temperature now when you're using the steam and crisp function you set the temperature for your air crisping you don't set the temperature for the steam the steam is what it is um you don't need to worry about that so we're going to take it to 375 and then i'm going to take the time up to 35 minutes all right and then we hit the start stop button all right there we go now it's preheating that means that it's going to boil that water it's going to produce the steam you don't need to worry about where your valve is when you're doing steam and crisp okay so it can be vented it can be sealed it makes no difference in that function the only function you really need to worry about it with this model is pressure cook all right so i've got my meatloaf in now i want to bake my meatloaf this is one of the beauties of this dual air fryer which i really love i don't do a lot of videos with it and honestly i don't use it a lot but but i love it and i love the concept of it where you can do two different things two different settings and it works great so let's go ahead and start our meatloaf that's gonna be one basket one we're gonna go to the bake function i'm gonna bake it at 325 and the time is going to be 45 minutes it might need a little more time than that i'm using a one pound of ground beef and then you know my some of my meatloaf seasonings and stuff may take longer than that this is just kind of um just for demonstration i haven't tested this recipe in this machine so i'm not sure all right so we can go ahead and start that now for the potato i want to definitely select two i want to go to airfry and we're going to take our temperature down to 350 okay there is a reason for that and it's a smaller space it conducts heat like a little bit more concentrated if you will so i found that if i went up to 375 i was kind of getting too done on the top so for this type of basket airfryer i do 350 and then the time is going to be 45 minutes and hit start so now we have both sides going and they're going to finish relatively the same time and this one is also going to finish relatively about the same time so now we just leave it alone what i like to recommend whenever you're doing anything with a steaming crisp even though you can open the lid at any time don't do that until 10 minutes after your crisping um the fan engages and it starts crisping so 10 minutes into the crisp cycle you can open the lid and start to check on your food prior to that you still have all that steam built so you don't want to let it out because it's still helping to cook that food more efficiently because steam cooks faster and more efficiently than any kind of dry heat okay so definitely there is an advantage to using some steam prior to air crisp when you have food that's dense and tends not to evenly cook like a potato okay so we're just gonna leave it alone and when this hits about the 20 minute mark so when we're gone about 15 minutes or so i will check on the potato just to make sure that it's not getting too brown on the top and see do i need to make adjustments in temperatures because these are the things that you should be always looking at when you're cooking recipes are guidelines they are not the end-all be-all so your potato might be colder in temperature therefore it might take longer than mine does your potato might be bigger it's going to take longer if it's real big like a pound potato you may need to go down to 300 or even 275 for you know an hour to even 90 minutes to get it cooked perfectly so those are the adjustments that you need to make at home based on the what food you're cooking and how you like it you may not like your hasselbeck as crispy as i do if that's the case lower your temperature some okay all right so let's go ahead and start checking on our potato i'm gonna leave the meatloaf alone for right now and oh it's looking so pretty see how the uh little slits are opening up what i like to do is take a temperature deep down into the potato okay and we want it to be over 200 degrees which it is just about it's 208 so really we're pretty much done so what i like to do now is baste it with this butter get in all of those grooves this is two tablespoons of butter mixed with the rest of the olive oil that was left over so probably there's probably about maybe two teaspoons maybe a tablespoon of the olive oil and now just baste it all over with the butter and when you're basting it try to fan them out a little bit that gives that beautiful accordion look that is typical of a hassle back all right perfect we'll go ahead and put that back in and let's check on this one now all right this one looks good too it's not quite as open as the other one but that's no no problem it's still gonna be perfect baste it i'll take a temperature of this one as well we're getting close they're not quite up to the 200 degrees so we're gonna go ahead and go back down now let me check on the meatloaf too see how we're doing with that because i can always bump up the heat if i need to to get it done at the same time looks good we're at about 150 so you know i think we're going to be just fine and dandy yeah we're just about at 150. now would be a great time if you want to put a glaze on your meatloaf but since i'm just making this for later i'm going to reheat it i will put the glaze on when i go to reheat it so that it doesn't burn the glaze that i use this is an italian themed meatloaf so a lot of italian seasonings in the mix i'm testing the recipe so if it's delicious i'll get it up on the website soon but the topping i'm gonna use is some tomato paste a little bit of balsamic vinegar and some brown sugar so real simple but it bakes on and it makes it delicious all right we're all my gosh it looks done all right look at that it's absolutely beautiful now for the finishing touches what i like to do is take some of this butter and oil now you can see it's cooled down some but that's going to be perfectly fine it's a little thicker go all over the outside get on the inside of as many of these little pieces as you can and then i just sprinkle a little bit of salt now i'm going to keep these very basic so i'm not adding any toppings but you can like i said add anything you want if you want to add bacon what i like to do is of course crisp the bacon up first and then like put them into the little pieces here makes it really really delicious top it with green onions sour cream anything you want shredded cheese absolutely anything all right let me get this one out because it is done now you can see it's a little bit different looking oh i hope i don't make it fall apart let me pull oh i'm trying not to get it to break apart oh a little bit no there we go perfect all right put this back in and i will turn off stop okay so now we're going to keep going with the meatloaf for a little bit all right so they look a little bit different now this one is a little less crispy that is because it was further away from the heat source so if i wanted it to look like this i would probably take my temperature up to about 400 degrees and i would get these more crispy outside so this would be good serving with a bunch of toppings this one is the way that i like it because i just like to pick them out but first let's do this we need to get a little bit of the butter basted on and then we want to sprinkle with salt of course that's optional it's just the way i like to do it you can also sprinkle with some pepper but aren't these gorgeous i mean really they're just beautiful all right so you want your potatoes on the inside the very inside to be at least 200 degrees both of these are now you can just pick one of these out look at that so you have the crispy edge of a like a potato chip with a soft baked potato oh my gosh wow this is my favorite way oh my gosh so so good mmm no they should pull apart too if they're done they do but you can see less crispy edges that's just temperature control but still perfectly cooked it's that little bit of water that really makes a difference that steam in the beginning oh my gosh so amazing so there you have it really really simple ways to make a hasselback potato now let's check on that meatloaf real quick yep we are up to temperature it's actually reading about 180 so we can go ahead and turn this off so my meatloaf is falling apart um like like horribly falling apart i'd consider that kind of a fail for a meatloaf not sure why i've made this before and it worked out fine but you know hey things happen we are definitely up to temperature so that's not the issue yeah i'm not sure but anyway there we go my fall apart meatloaf but who cares right who cares let's take a taste the flavors are really good now but the texture isn't right so anyway this is not a video about meatloaf i just wanted to show that you could do two things at the same time obviously this is not um ready for uh prime time recipe yet i don't understand it but hey it happens i made the meat mixture up the night before last night had it in the refrigerator and then brought it out so i don't really know what happened but anyway it fell apart you know things happen definitely try your hand at making the hassle hasselback potatoes not only are they stunning on a plate they're super easy to make and they're absolutely delicious oh i just love them and i love to eat them just like this um you

Channel: The Salted Pepper

Views: 92,099

Keywords: Ninja Foodi, Ninja Foodi Recipes, The Salted Pepper, air fryer hasselback potatoes, ninja foodie recipe, ninja foodi hasselback potatoes, easy hasselback potatoes, ninja foodi steam fryer, Ninja Foodi steam crisp recipes, ninja foodie steam crisp potatoes

Id: Lj7zLOs5AQo

Length: 29min 55sec (1795 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022