Let me show you how your air fryer can make amazing toasties! With extra crispy buttery bread and gooey melted cheese, you can easily recreate your favorite toasties in the air fryer, whatever choice of filling or bread you wish to use.
Introducing the easiest and best way I’ve found to make toasties
Toasties in the air fryer! Hooray!
A toastie, for the non-British among you, is a toasted sandwich. Here in the UK they are often made in dedicated appliances (toastie makers or sandwich presses), not a frying pan like their American counterpart, the grilled cheese. And the choice of fillings is extremely broad. Like, baked beans can make their way into toasties and no one blinks.
I’ve already shared a recipe for an Air Fryer Sandwich so this post may feel repetitive, but where the aim of that sandwich was to show you how to work little veggie scraps into a tasty lunch, this is more of a template to recreate whatever your favorite toastie is in the air fryer instead of a toastie maker.
Take a peek…
As you can see, I’ve made two toasties here to show you how it’s done: Toastie 1 is cheese, tomato and pesto. Toastie 2 is beans and cheese.
Air Fryer Toasties vs. Toastie Maker Toasties
So let’s just establish this up front: They’re not quite the same finish. Here’s how:
- Toastie / panini makers cook the sandwiches while pressing them down. This flattens the bread a little. A lot of the UK toastie makers actually seal the bread at the same time, so it’s like a little toastie pocket. This is also how you can pack saucy wet fillings, like beans, into your toastie without overspill.
- An air fryer cooks the sandwich while air circulates around it. This makes the bread crispy and springy. Your fillings mostly stay put – nothing is pressing them down and out. If you like the sealed “toastie pocket” effect, it’s not going to work so easily here. I’ve actually tried to replicate this using a sandwich cutter / sealer – but in my experience the bread always un-seals and springs back up while it’s air frying. Which makes sense with all that air being blown around in there. So you have to be OK with a less “sealed” toastie BUT you can still get away with piling lots of wet ingredients in there (like beans) without too much risk of overspill as it cooks.
Toastie filling Ideas
- Cheese – no matter what else you’re putting in your toastie, I do think you always need a good melting cheese in there to help it all stick together. Cheddar, mozzarella, gruyere, whatever you’ve got.
- Baked beans – a few scoops on top of the cheese – they can go in cold and they’ll cook inside the toastie.
- Tomatoes or peppers – thinly sliced.
- Pesto, chutney, harissa, cranberry sauce – for amazing flavor or a kick of sweetness.
- Vegetarian deli “meats”.
- Leftovers! If you have a little scoop of curry, chili or mac and cheese which isn’t big enough to make a meal of – add it to a toastie instead!
Top Tips for Air Frying your Toasties:
- This recipe assumes your fillings are going in cold – if you’re adding already hot ingredients you can cook at 200C / 390F for about 5 minutes instead.
- This recipe assumes you are using sandwich bread – if you use something more substantial or artisan, it might take a little longer.
- It is best to grate your cheese rather than slice it – it will melt more evenly.
- This recipe was tested in two different Air Fryers, the Instant Vortex and a small Philips Viva. It works well in both. But I find that since the smaller air fryer’s fan is a lot closer to the food, it will get a lot crispier and can also make the bread curl up a little on the top.
- You can use olive oil instead of butter for the outside of the toastie if you prefer. Just brush a thin layer on.
- I don’t find it necessary to flip the toastie midway through cooking as long as I cook it directly in the basket with no liner. This may vary between air fryer models.
Air Fryer Toasties
Ingredients
- 2 slices of bread
- butter
- 1 handful grated cheese
- Additional fillings – baked beans, chutney, pesto, tomato, onion, etc
Instructions
- Preheat the air fryer to 180C / 360F while you assemble your toasties.
- Butter two slices of bread. Place one slice of bread, buttered side down, on a plate. Add your cheese and any other fillings – don't be afraid to pile it fairly high. Then add the other slice of bread, buttered side up, to the top.
- Carefully transfer the toastie to the air fryer basket. You can make 1 or 2 at a time in a medium sized air fryer.
- Air fry for 5-8 minutes at 180C / 360F until the bread is sufficiently golden and crispy and the cheese is melted and gooey. Generally the cook time will be on the lower end if you're only making one toastie, at the higher end if making two.
- Serve immediately.
Not a total failure, as it was edible. But it doesn’t brown the bread at all, like you get in a toastie maker or even a frying pan. I used sliced cheese and it only partially melted it after 9 minutes. By then the bread was more hard cooked than toasted.
I’m sorry Jonathan, that doesn’t sound ideal at all. Can I ask what model of air fryer you used? It doesn’t sound like your toasties got enough direct heat. I wonder if it’s a really large basket or even a shelf style air fryer, or perhaps a brand that runs a little less hot / less strong fans. I am interested in the details so I can help troubleshoot and put appropriate warnings in place for future readers.
Does not work in a Ninja. Machine blows the top slice of bread offÂ
Argh, how frustrating. You could use toothpicks to hold it together if you want to give it another try but thank you for the feedback and specifically for naming the brand of air fryer you use. I only have a Philips and a Vortex so it’s super helpful to know what’s happening with the other models out there.
I have two Russell Hobbs air fryers 8l and 4l. Toasties work beautifully in the smaller 4l air fryer. Haven’t tried in my bigger one though as it’s only me that like them, but I’m sure they would be just as good. Turn out really crispy and yummy