{"id":165549,"title":"Air Fryer Baby Potatoes","modified":"2026-08-25T15:08:21+02:00","plain":"Whole baby potatoes with crispy skins and tender, creamy centers, cooked in the air fryer with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary.\n\n\n\nYou hear them before you see them: the basket rattling, the little potatoes tumbling against the hot metal. Their skins wrinkle and blister, while the garlic and rosemary perfume the kitchen long before they’re done. \n\n\n\nInside, the flesh stays creamy, almost meltingly tender. A drizzle of olive oil is all it takes—no peeling, no pot of boiling water. They start out as an easy side dish and somehow vanish before the main course hits the table.\n\n\n\nAdd an air fryer pork tenderloin on the side, and dinner is sorted.\n\n\n\nWhat are grenaille potatoes?\n\n\n\nGrenaille isn’t a variety but a size grade: young new potatoes harvested before they reach full size. Amandine, Charlotte, Ratte, and Roseval make up most of what you’ll find on French market stalls. \n\n\n\nTheir skin is thin enough to eat, and their flesh stays firm yet tender when cooked, never mealy. That is exactly what you want for air fryer cooking: the ratio of skin to flesh is high, so you get plenty of crispness for very little fat.\n\n\n\nThe name comes from “grain”: grenaille refers to anything small-sized, whether in a foundry or a vegetable patch. In cooking, then, it says nothing about taste or variety, only about size after sorting. On market crates, the label “new potatoes” often covers the same produce.\n\n\n\nIn the same basket, air fryer sweet potato fries bring a sweeter touch.\n\n\n\nFrom bistro staple to air fryer basket\n\n\n\nSaut\u00e9ed baby potatoes are a staple of French home cooking and bistro menus, served alongside roast chicken, rib steak, or duck confit, often coated in goose fat. Their appeal is as much about economy as flavor: nothing to peel, almost no waste, and plenty of golden skin compared with the amount of flesh. They land in the middle of the table in their serving dish, and everyone helps themselves.\n\n\n\nThe air fryer brings this dish into the modern kitchen without taking anything away from it. Its basket is small, the heat turns dry and intense within minutes, and the circulating air drives off surface moisture far faster than a conventional oven, which needs much longer to heat up for just a handful of potatoes. \n\n\n\nA manual setting works better than the “potato” or “fries” programs on some models, which are often too short and leave the centers underdone. The air fryer cooking chart gives you similar guidelines for everything else in the basket.\n\n\n\nA foolproof pairing: air fryer chicken drumsticks.\n\n\n\nKey ingredients for air fryer baby potatoes\n\n\n\nStart with evenly sized potatoes. Scrub them under cold water, but don’t peel them: the skin provides the crispness and helps hold them together when you shake the basket. Five hundred grams fit in a single layer in a standard basket, which is the real limit of the appliance. If your baby potatoes vary in size, cut the larger ones in half and leave the smaller ones whole; they should finish cooking at the same time.\n\n\n\nThe olive oil isn’t there for frying but for carrying heat and helping the aromatics cling to the skin. Two tablespoons are enough to coat 500 grams without drowning them. Rosemary and thyme, fresh or dried, can handle 200 \u00b0C from start to finish; herbes de Provence do the same job. Fresh minced garlic, however, can burn before the end and turn bitter: add it when you shake the basket halfway through cooking if that bothers you, or swap it for a teaspoon of garlic powder, which stands up to the heat better.\n\n\n\nThe finishing touches happen after cooking. Parsley and chives blacken in the heat and lose their fragrance, so chop them over the potatoes while they’re still piping hot. Fleur de sel also goes on at the end, so it keeps its crystals and crunch. Grated Parmesan is optional, but the residual heat melts it into a salty veil that clings to the skins.\n\n\n\nTechnical tips for crispy baby potatoes\n\n\n\nDrying matters most: a potato that is still wet creates steam in the basket, and as long as there is steam, the skin softens instead of browning. \n\n\n\nPreheat for 3 minutes, spread the potatoes in a single layer without crowding, and shake halfway through cooking so the side resting on the bottom gets exposed. Size determines the rest: 15 minutes at 200 \u00b0C for small potatoes up to 3 cm, 18 minutes at 200 \u00b0C for medium ones from 3 to 5 cm, 22 minutes at 190 \u00b0C for large ones over 5 cm, and 12 minutes at 200 \u00b0C if you cut them in half. \n\n\n\nFor a greener plate, serve air fryer zucchini.\n\n\n\nA knife tip should slide in without resistance; if it still catches while the skin is already dark, the potatoes were too large for the temperature. They keep for 2 days in an airtight container in the fridge and crisp back up in 4 minutes at 180 \u00b0C in the air fryer—something the microwave will never do.\n\n\n\n\n\n\tCrispy Air Fryer Baby Potatoes\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t500 g baby potatoes (scrubbed and unpeeled)2 tablespoons olive oil3 cloves garlic (thinly sliced)1 tablespoon fresh rosemary (or thyme or herbes de Provence)fleur de selfreshly ground black pepperTo finish1 teaspoon flat-leaf parsley (finely chopped)grated Parmesan (optional)\t\n\t\n\t\tPreparationScrub the potatoes under cold water without peeling them, then dry them thoroughly with a kitchen towel.Place the potatoes in a large bowl. Add the olive oil, sliced garlic, rosemary, fleur de sel, and pepper, then toss until evenly coated.Air Fryer CookingPreheat the air fryer to 200 \u00b0C for 3 minutes.Arrange the potatoes in the basket in a single layer, without stacking them, then cook for 18 minutes at 200 \u00b0C, shaking the basket halfway through cooking (after 9 minutes).Check for doneness with the tip of a knife: it should slide in without resistance.To FinishSprinkle with the chopped parsley and a pinch of fleur de sel.Grate a little Parmesan over the top, if using, then serve immediately.\t\n\t\n\t\tTips:\n\nDry the potatoes thoroughly after washing: excess moisture turns to steam and prevents the skins from browning.\nPreheat for 3 minutes: a hot basket helps the potatoes crisp up.\nCook in a single layer without stacking; if making more than 500 g, cook in two batches and reheat the first batch for 3 minutes at the end.\nShake the basket halfway through cooking (around 9 minutes) and avoid opening it too often so the temperature stays high.\nAdjust the cooking time to the size of the potatoes: small (\u2264 3 cm) 15 min at 200 \u00b0C; medium (3\u20135 cm) 18 min at 200 \u00b0C; large (> 5 cm) 22 min at 190 \u00b0C; halved 12 min at 200 \u00b0C.\nFresh garlic can burn at 200 \u00b0C: add it halfway through cooking if needed, or replace it with 1 tsp garlic powder.\nAdd delicate herbs such as parsley or chives after cooking.\nStorage: up to 2 days in the refrigerator. Reheating: 4 minutes at 180 \u00b0C in the air fryer.\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\tAccompagnementFran\u00e7aise","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}