Air-Fryer Bean Tostadas
Corn tortillas air-fried until they puff and crisp like proper tostada shells, then loaded with refried black beans, shredded cheese, lettuce, and chopped tomato. The five-minute weeknight dinner that's also somehow a complete meal — beans, grains, vegetables, dairy, all on one plate.
The tostada is the simplest possible Mexican-American dish — a crispy flat tortilla loaded with toppings, eaten with the hands. It's also one of the easiest dishes to ruin, because the tostada shell is the load-bearing wall and if it goes soft, everything collapses. The deep-fried version (the proper way) is excellent but messy. The shop-bought tostada shells are fine but tend to be stale by the time you buy them. The air-fryer method, which I genuinely didn't think would work, produces tostada shells that are crisp enough to support a full load of beans and toppings without bending.
The technique is laughably simple: corn tortillas brushed lightly with oil, air-fried at 400°F for about five minutes. They puff slightly in the basket, then settle into a flat, crisp disc with slightly bubbled spots. Better than restaurant tostadas by a small margin, better than bagged tostadas by a wide one.
The photo shows a single tostada in its natural arrangement: the crisp tortilla as the base (you can see it through the toppings), spread with refried beans, scattered with shredded cheese (the Mexican blend — cheddar, Monterey Jack, asadero), shredded lettuce or romaine, diced tomato. There are flecks of green lettuce on the surrounding plate — the casual confetti of mealtime. Serve two per person; they're more substantial than they look.
Method
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01
Warm the tortillas
Stack the tortillas, cover with a damp paper towel, microwave 20
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02
Oil and salt
Brush each tortilla on both sides with olive oil. Sprinkle a
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03
Air fry the shells
Heat the air fryer to 400°F (200°C). Place 2 tortillas at a time
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04
Warm the beans
While the tortillas cook, warm the refried beans in a small
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05
Assemble
Lay the crispy tostada shells on plates. Spread each with a
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06
Serve
Eat with both hands, leaning forward over a plate. Hit with hot