Air Fryer Shishito Peppers with Togarashi

I remember a time not all that long ago when shishito peppers--those crinkly mild green Japanese chiles--were hard to find in markets and just a little less so as a bar app at hip restaurants. It was a big score back when Susie's Farms was in farmers markets and had them in season.

I now regularly see them--no surprise here--at Japanese markets--but last week I found shishito peppers in a produce display at Sprouts. And bought a bag.

It coincided with my recent purchase of my second air fryer. Air fryer number one was big--too big for my countertop so I had to use it on my stove--and the one time I used it, the house stank from burning plastic. So back it went. Then I read about a much smaller, much less expensive air fryer that would be perfect for my single-person household. The brand is Dash and they have the fryers in multiple cool coolers with a small compact footprint, and both manual and digital displays.

Here's mine (and no, I don't get any payment from either Dash or Amazon):

I used it for the first time over the weekend on, what else, the shishito peppers. Normally, I would toss them in a little oil and let them blister in a hot cast iron skillet. It's not a big undertaking, unless the temperature is soaring in the summer. But cooking them up in the air fryer--essentially using convection heat--was even better because I didn't have to hover over the skillet and deal with peppers so twisted they wouldn't stay where you turned them.

With the air fryer all I had to do was toss them in a little vegetable oil and place them in a single layer in the crisper  basket, which rests in the crisper drawer. The downside? Because it's a small unit I had to do two batches, but it wasn't a big deal since the cooking time is a mere five minutes. This particular air fryer is very intuitive so you press the power button and it immediately shows the temperature, which I turned up from its default 360° to 390° with the + button.

Then you press the timer/temperature button, which displays the default time of 10 minutes and move it to 5 minutes using the - button. Press the start arrow button and it takes care of the rest. In fact, the temperature and timer alternate on the display so you know exactly what is going on as it counts down. And once it hits the one-minute mark, it counts down in seconds.

Midway, pull out the basket and shake, then put it back into the machine. When the timer beeper goes off, check and make sure your shishitos are sufficiently blistered. If so, pull out the basket and use tongs to pull out the shishitos (excess oil may have collected in the bottom of the crisper drawer below the basket so you don't want to risk burning yourself by flipping it over).

Now how do you season your shishitos? If you're like most people you salt the shishitos, then squeeze lemon juice over them. And that's perfectly wonderful. I'm fond of ponzu sauce on them as well. But with this batch I sprinkled coarse sea salt and shichimi togarashi, which is a traditional Japanese seasoning mix.

It has a bite, thanks to chili pepper and szechuan pepper. But it also contains black and white sesame seeds, orange peel, and dried basil. So it offers plenty of zesty flavor, too, and pairs beautifully with the blistered shishitos.

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