Air Fryer Indian Recipes

Indian cooking was built for high heat. Tandoor ovens run at 480 °C (900 °F) — the exact intense, dry heat the air fryer replicates at home without installing a clay oven in your kitchen. That means the char on your chicken tikka is real, not faked with a broiler. The blistered skin on paneer tikka comes from actual radiant heat, not steam. The crunch on your samosa is structural, not breaded.

The flavour compounds in Indian spices — the volatile oils in cumin, the capsaicin in Kashmiri chilli, the earthy depth of garam masala — all bloom faster under circulating dry heat than in a conventional oven. A 20-minute marinade and 14 minutes at 200 °C outperforms a 2-hour slow-roast for colour and bark.

Every recipe here is built around the mistake-forward method: tested wrong first, corrected with a specific temperature or technique change, and written up so you skip the failure on your first try. Marinade time, temperature, rack position, whether to flip — all field-tested in Anadi's kitchen.