Air Fryer Drippings Gravy
The sticky brown residue in the bottom of an air fryer drawer is worth having, and this shows you how to get it out and into a gravy without wrecking the coating.
- Contains meat
- air fryer
- drippings
- shortcut
- small batch
- Prep
- 2 min
- Cook
- 7 min
- Total
- 9 min
- Serves
- 2
- Difficulty
- Easy
Air fryers concentrate drippings brilliantly, which is a nice surprise, but they also stick them to a non stick surface that you are not supposed to scrape with metal. So the trick is heat and water rather than force. It takes about four minutes and it turns a washing up job into gravy, which is a decent trade.
Ingredients
Makes about 300ml, enough for two plates
Scaled amounts are rounded to something you can actually measure. Season at the end and trust your mouth over the maths.
Kit
- Air fryer with a drawer or basket
- Silicone or wooden spatula
- Small saucepan
- Whisk
- Kettle
Method
As soon as the food comes out, take the crisper plate out of the drawer and pour 150ml of boiling water straight into the hot drawer. Doing it while everything is still hot is what makes this easy, because a cold air fryer drawer sets that residue like glue.
Leave the water in there for one minute, then work the base over with a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon. Never use metal or an abrasive pad, you will take the coating off the drawer and it will never be the same again.
Give the crisper plate the same treatment over the drawer, since a fair amount of the good stuff clings underneath it.
Pour the resulting brown liquid through a sieve into a jug and let it stand for a minute so any fat rises. Skim off all but about a tablespoon of the fat.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, sprinkle in the flour and cook the paste for a minute over medium heat until it is the colour of a digestive biscuit.
Whisk in the drawer liquid a little at a time until smooth, then add the hot stock. Bring it to a simmer and cook for three or four minutes until it thickens and looks glossy.
Stir in the soy sauce and grind in pepper. If whatever you cooked was heavily seasoned or coated in a rub, taste before adding any salt, because rubs are salty and all of that has gone into the drawer.
Strain again if there are crumbs of coating floating in it, particularly after breaded food, which sheds a lot.
Tips worth knowing
- Do this straight after cooking. Two minutes of waiting turns a thirty second job into a five minute scrub, and once the drawer is in the sink the flavour has gone down the plughole.
- Breaded or battered food leaves crumbs rather than clean residue and makes a cloudy gravy. Strain it well or use this method mainly after plain roasted meat.
- Marinades with a lot of sugar, honey or barbecue sauce burn in an air fryer and go bitter. If the residue is black and smells sharp, skip it and make a plain gravy instead.
- The drawer will be easier to wash afterwards, which is a small but real bonus.
Change it up
- After air fried chicken thighs, add a strip of lemon peel and a sprig of thyme to the simmer and strain them out at the end.
- After air fried pork, deglaze with 50ml (2fl oz) of cider rather than some of the water and reduce it by half before the stock goes in. Cloudy apple juice with a squeeze of lemon does the job without alcohol.
- Thicken with two teaspoons of cornflour slaked in cold water instead of the roux to make it gluten free, and add the butter at the end for gloss.
Keeping and reheating
Two days in the fridge, three months in the freezer. Amounts this small reduce quickly on reheating, so warm it in a pan over a low heat with a tablespoon of water rather than blasting it.
Questions people ask
Can you make gravy from air fryer drippings?
Yes. Air fryers concentrate drippings well because the drawer is small and the heat is fierce. Pour boiling water into the hot drawer, lift the residue with a silicone spatula and use that liquid as the base of your gravy.
Will deglazing damage my air fryer drawer?
Not if you use boiling water and a silicone or wooden tool. What damages the non stick coating is metal utensils, abrasive pads and thermal shock from cold water hitting a very hot drawer, so use hot water and soft tools.
There is not much liquid in my air fryer, is it worth it?
Usually yes, because what is there is highly concentrated. If the drawer looks genuinely dry with only pale marks on it, the food was lean and there is nothing to recover, so make a stock based gravy instead and do not waste the time.