Air Fryer Cheese Straws: The Perfect Weekday Snack

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Air fryer cheese straws are the crispy, cheesy snack you never knew you needed. Made with dough, cheese, and spices, they are perfect for an appetizer buffet or for whenever you need a quick and tasty pick-me-up. Cheese straws can be made with a variety of cheeses, so pick your favorites or follow our recipe below. They’re one of many easy recipes to make in an air fryer — they don’t require any added oil, you don’t have to fire up the oven, and they come out crispy and perfectly cooked. Serve them alone or with marinara sauce or your favorite dip for a complementary flavor.

Recipe developer Michelle Bottalico has created a recipe for air fryer cheese straws that are quick, easy, and delicious. Cheddar and Parmesan cheeses are distributed on a thawed puff pastry crust and flavored with minced garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper, and then the pastry is folded in half and cut into strips. The most precise part of the recipe comes next — twisting each strip into a spiral — but it’s also fun to see the colors and textures come alive as you twist. All that’s left is to air-fry the straws until browned and crispy. Not only are these cheese straws irresistible, but they look great with crispy cheese peeking out of multicolor spirals. Serve this savory finger food at your next party: No one needs to know how easy they really are to make.

For this recipe, you will need a puff pastry sheet. Make sure it’s fully thawed and kept cold. You’ll also need shredded cheddar cheese and grated Parmesan. Have minced garlic at the ready as well as ground sweet paprika, salt, and black pepper. It doesn’t take much to create this delicious snack.

Unroll the thawed puff pastry sheet and roll it out to enlarge slightly, keeping the shape rectangular.

Cut the sheet in half lengthwise.

Evenly distribute the cheddar and Parmesan over one half of the pastry.

Sprinkle the garlic, paprika, salt, and black pepper over the cheese and place the other half of the pastry on top, trimming the edges to make them straight.

Press the folded pastry gently, and cut it into strips about 1 inch wide.

Gently twist each strip and place them in an air fryer basket or rack in a single layer (cook them in batches if they don’t all fit).

Preheat the air fryer to 350 F.

Air fry for 10 to 12 minutes until crispy and golden, then remove the cheese straws from the air fryer and transfer them to a wire rack to cool slightly.

Serve the cheese straws warm or at room temperature.

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Air fryers are valued as kitchen appliances because of their ability to cook a wide range of foods in a lighter way. Something that often causes confusion is the question of whether to spray the air fryer rack or basket with oil before cooking the vegetables, fries, fish, or whatever dish you’re making in the machine. Spraying the basket, just like greasing a baking pan you use in the oven, can seem like a good idea for a few reasons. Greasing normally prevents sticking, which protects the food from breaking or tearing while helping to form a crispy crust. It also makes cleanup easier.

Many people use an air fryer to cut down on oil, so spraying the basket doesn’t mesh with that goal. But the most important reason to avoid using cooking spray in an air fryer is because it can damage the nonstick coating inside the device. The guilty party is soy lecithin, an emulsifier found in many cooking sprays, even expensive ones, that clings to surfaces and builds up over repeated uses. It will actually make the surface less nonstick over time. You can get around this problem by wiping a small amount of liquid high-heat oil onto the basket if you’re working with ingredients that are more prone to sticking.

Many people make cheese straws with puff pastry because it’s a convenient and easy way to prepare the recipe faster. Puff pastry is a complicated dough to make from scratch, but frozen puff pastry dough just needs to be defrosted before it’s ready to use. However, this isn’t the only dough that can be used to make delicious cheese straws. Another option is to use packaged crescent roll dough in the same way as puff pastry. You can also make your own shortcrust pastry dough, roll it out into two thin rectangles, and proceed in the same way.

If you want to make homemade dough and go a slightly different route, you can make a type of cheese straw dough from scratch that’s popular in the South. The dough is made from flour, butter, cheddar cheese, and spices, and has the consistency of cookie dough. To make the straw shapes, the dough is passed through a cookie press with a star-shaped attachment on the end. The baked straws have the perfect texture to pick up and bite into, with characteristic ridges from the press still visible on the outer surface. A cookie press isn’t the most common kitchen gadget, so if you don’t have one, here’s a workaround. Roll the dough into a very thin rectangle, cut it into strips, and twist them like we’ve done with our puff pastry strips in this recipe before placing them on a baking sheet and baking.

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