Had a total air fryer disaster last Thursday that ruined dinner

I was trying to make crispy tofu for a stir fry, something I've done a bunch of times. I pressed the block for 30 minutes, cut it up, and tossed it in cornstarch like usual. My mistake was I got distracted by a work call and left the pieces in a single, crowded layer instead of spacing them out. Ten minutes in, the smoke alarm went off. I opened the fryer to find a solid, stuck-on sheet of burnt cornstarch glue on the bottom of the basket, with half the tofu pieces welded to it and the other half still soft. The whole kitchen smelled awful for hours. I had to order pizza, which felt like a real defeat. Has anyone else had a cornstarch coating fuse into a nightmare like that, and how do you stop it?

2 comments

2 Comments

rileyfox8d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that cornstarch glue situation is the worst! It's funny how so many kitchen fails come down to that one simple rule we all know but ignore, like giving things space to breathe. I see it everywhere now, from people cramming too much into a washing machine to stuffing a closet until the door won't shut. We're all just trying to save a little time or effort, and it almost always backfires into a bigger mess. Your tofu story is a perfect, smoky example of that.

river_reed8d agoMost Upvoted

Ever read that book about tidying up, @rileyfox?