Air frying tilapia is one of the best ways to cook tilapia. Not only is it easy, air frying tilapia is also a pretty quick way of getting tilapia cooked.
Interestingly, you can completely air fry tilapia in less than 12 minutes. When you crave quick cooking time that still yields delicious and flaky tilapia, air frying your raw tilapia might just be the ideal thing to do. More interestingly, the ingredients to air fry your tilapia are just parts of the normal condiments you can pick off the shelf of your pantry.
Tilapia is a kind of white fish with a flaky feel and mild flavor. Notwithstanding that China is the world’s biggest tilapia producer, tilapia is well cultivated almost anywhere in the world. Tilapia is generously rich in nutrients including phosphorus, potassium, niacin and Vitamin B12. Being a kind of fish, tilapia is considered protein-rich and can be cooked in various ways.
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If well prepared using an air fryer, tilapia could make an awesome delicacy alongside other foods such as potatoes, salads, sauces, coleslaw and rice.
Air frying tilapia is a cooking process pretty much easy to follow. But if you seem to lack the right information on the best mix of ingredients for seasoning the tilapia (to be air fried) and the right way to air fry tilapia, you’ll definitely find this post handy.
In this air fryer tilapia recipe, you’ll learn the easy way to get your tilapia air fried in minutes. Whether it’s frozen or fresh, your tilapia will seem a lot easy to air fry by the time you’re done reading this post.
How to Season Tilapia before Air Frying
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Everyone knows you have to season tilapia before air frying, but you might not know the best mix of ingredients for seasoning your tilapia.
Some of the ingredients you’ll find awesome for seasoning tilapia include parsley, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, olive oil and onion granules. Just to give your tilapia a bit of coloring, you may want to add paprika to your mix of ingredients.
To season your tilapia, scoop out the right proportion of the necessary ingredients from your pantry. Stir the ingredients (garlic powder, paprika, parsley, onion granules, salt and black pepper) together in a small container.
Then, get the right proportion of olive oil to whisk your tilapia with. At this point, you’re expected to have chopped your tilapia into fillets.
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Sprinkle the tilapia fillets with this seasoning (the ingredients you mixed together earlier). Do well to season the fillets on all sides while still ensuring that they’re well whisked with the olive oil.
To keep the ingredients in the right proportion, below is what we recommend for two fillets of tilapia:
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• ¼ teaspoon of black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon of garlic powder
• Enough salt
• ¼ teaspoon of parsley
• ¼ teaspoon of paprika (provided you want coloring for the tilapia)
• ¼ teaspoon of onion granules
Air Frying Your Tilapia –Here’s How It’s Done
After generous seasoning of tilapia, the next procedure is to air fry the tilapia fillets. Get your air fryer ready and then place the fillets in it. Begin to air fry the tilapia fillets while setting the frying temperature to 365(degrees) F or 180 (degrees) C.
To properly air fry the tilapia fillets, we suggest any cooking time between 5—8 minutes. But you may want to consider lifting the fillets off the air fryer only after you’ve achieved the desired texture and flakiness for your cooked tilapia.
If you really don’t want the cooked fillets to crumble –while lifting them off the air fryer –you should use a spatula in scooping them.
How Long Should You Air Fry Tilapia?
There doesn’t seem to be a fixed amount of time for air frying tilapia just because your tilapia can take varying amounts of time to properly cook, depending on the nature and size of the tilapia. By size, it’s well expected that a whole tilapia should take a longer period to cook whereas a tilapia fillet would normally cook within a shorter period.
Also, fresh tilapia and frozen tilapia can take differing periods to cook. On the part of the air fryer, determinants of cooking time (for your tilapia) include the brand, size, model and wattage of the device. But generally, it takes an average of 10—15 minutes to air fry a whole tilapia while 7—10 minutes appears enough to air fry a tilapia fillet.
Another thing you might be curious to learn about air frying tilapia is how to air fry frozen tilapia.
It’s pretty easy to air fry frozen tilapia, and the good thing about this is that there’s no need to thaw the tilapia before air frying.
To season frozen tilapia, you can apply the same mix of ingredients we recommended earlier for tilapia seasoning. The ingredients are as follows: black pepper, garlic powder, (olive) oil, salt, parsley and onion granules. Paprika may also be added if you want coloring for the tilapia.
Stir the ingredients together in a small container. Place the mix aside and pick up the tilapia. Wash the frozen tilapia under some cold or (running) tap water in order to free it from glaze. Gently stroke the tilapia (using a towel) until it becomes dry.
Scoop the mix (of ingredients) onto the tilapia and spread evenly. If the tilapia is already chopped into fillets, get your air fryer ready and place the fillets in it. You can air fry the frozen tilapia fillets for 10 minutes or thereabouts. For this cooking process, we recommend setting the air fryer to a temperature of 175 (degrees) C. As mentioned earlier, your type of air fryer coupled with the thickness/size of the tilapia (and certain other factors) can cause the cooking time to vary. If your tilapia doesn’t seem to have cooked well after 10 minutes, you can leave it to air fry for two more minutes.
Reheating Your Tilapia
Tilapia reheating can be done using a microwave, an oven or the air fryer used in cooking the fish initially. If you prefer to reheat the tilapia in a microwave, simply stack the tilapia (fillets) on the safe plate of the microwave and cover it. Then, you can heat the tilapia at an interval of 20-30 seconds until it is thoroughly heated. For the best result while reheating tilapia, we recommend that you tilt the microwave to its high settings.
If you’d rather reheat your tilapia using an air fryer, you can consider air frying the fish for three minutes or thereabouts, while setting the air fryer’s temperature to 180 (degrees) C. Reheating at this temperature, the tilapia is expected to have heated well internally after 3 or 4 minutes.
Storing Tilapia Leftovers
If you seem to have air fried plenty of tilapia fillets, you might want to know how best to store leftovers while still preventing them from losing flavor. Depending on your kind of storage (refrigerator) and its capability, you may be able to store the leftovers (of your air fried tilapia) for several weeks or even up to two months.
Whether you’ll be storing the leftovers in a freezer or fridge, ensure they’re well sealed. Meanwhile, the freezer is more than likely the better option for storing the tilapia leftovers for longer periods.
Conclusion
We’re pretty sure that you now have a real shot at how best to airy fry tilapia. While we believe our air fryer tilapia recipe must have walked you through everything needed to air fry tilapia, we suggest that you check your tilapia fillets regularly when air frying. This is simply to avoid excessive cooking of tilapia to such an awkward extent that the tilapia dries completely.
Nathan Florida
Nathan Florida
