An easy 10 minute grilled veggie sandwich made in the air fryer! Use whatever scraps of cheese, veggies and sauce you have to hand for a satisfying and hands-off lunch. Air frying your sandwich guarantees perfectly even cooking so you can pile it high with toppings!
Grilled or toasted sandwiches are always appreciated, but you know what’s not? The process of toasting them without all the filling squashing out at the sides. I am not skilled in this process. I either smush the sandwich too much or I burn my bread before the filling has melted, but it’s all good, because if you have an air fryer, there is another way.
You just make a sandwich and put it in the air fryer and everything toasts and melts to perfection. Making grilled cheese in the air fryer is a tried and tested concept, but it doesn’t take full advantage of this method. The beauty of it is how high you can pile up your sandwich with veggies. It cooks evenly no matter how high you go with it.
So liberating!
This concept (it’s barely a recipe) is great for cleaning out the fridge of your odds and ends. See here today we have a bit of pepper, a bit of mushroom, a rogue cherry tomato, some cheese. A big dollop of leftover pesto. There is room for everything.
When we’re using veggies, it can make sense to pre cook them in the air fryer for 5 minutes first. I did this with my mushrooms and peppers because I wanted them to have a more roasted feel, not a fresh crunchy feel. But this doesn’t add much time, and you don’t need to clean the basket before making the sandwich, so it’s not a big deal at all.
These are my favorite ingredients for air fried sandwiches, but you really can go your own way here. Whatever veggies, whatever cheese, whatever sauce. You can also open the top at the end and stuff in some lettuce, hummus, anything you don’t want to cook.
I highly recommend making this with a sourdough, tiger loaf or other really yummy bakery fresh bread – but it’s all about using what you’ve got, so plain sliced bread will work absolutely fine.
If you enjoy being able to make hearty hot lunches in your air fryer (isn’t that one of its greatest strengths?) I’ll also point you to my Air Fryer Smashed Baked Potatoes which are another fun, “do what you feel” kind of idea.
Air Fryer Veggie Sandwich
Ingredients
- Handful of grated cheese
- A few mushroom slices
- A few red bell pepper slices
- Large spoonful of pesto
- 1 cherry tomato, quartered
- 2 slices of bread
- A little olive oil, for spritzing the bread
Instructions
- First, spritz the mushrooms and peppers with a little oil and air fry for 5 minutes at 200C / 390F.
- Assemble your sandwich. Spread pesto on both sides of the bread, fill with cheese, mushrooms, pepper and tomato.
- Spritz or brush both outer sides of the bread with olive oil. Sprinkle a little extra cheese on top of the sandwich.
- Air fry for 5 minutes at 200C / 390F until the bread is sufficiently golden and crispy.
Notes
Equipment
Hey, I have falafel that I usually reheat in my air fryer for 5 minutes at 200c, should I still need to do this if I’m air frying the sandwich?
I would probably re-cook the falafel if you want it crispy – it won’t crisp up if it’s only cooked within the sandwich.