Air Fryer Frozen Broccoli

This air fryer broccoli recipe uses frozen broccoli and a couple other simple ingredients. I love fresh vegetables but you can’t beat the convenience of frozen veggies. Because I live about 25 minutes from the closest grocery store, my freezer is stocked full of them!

Finding ways to get healthy food on the table isn’t always easy. This air fry broccoli recipe is customizable – using your favorite spices, you can find the best flavor combination for this easy vegetable side dish.

Where’s the recipe?

Here at My Crazy Good Life we want our recipes to be straightforward enough for any level cook to follow. That’s why we like to provide as much information as we can.

In this article you’ll find ingredient information, seasoning ideas, step by step instructions, tips on how to get the best results, plus healthy eating plan calculations. If you’d like to skip past all of that, you can scroll to the bottom of this post where you’ll find the easy to print recipe for crispy Air Fryer Frozen Broccoli.

Ingredients

• Broccoli: broccoli is high in a lot of nutrients like vitamin C, vitamin K, iron, fiber, and potassium. It also has more protein than most other vegetables. For this recipe we’ll be using frozen broccoli florets.
• Cooking spray oil: I like to use avocado oil or olive oil spray.
• Seasoning: see below for ideas that will add great flavor to your broccoli bites.

Optional seasonings for Air Fryer Frozen Broccoli

• Sea salt & black pepper
• Italian seasoning
• Garlic powder and onion powder
• Montreal seasoning
• Balsamic vinegar
• Parmesan cheese
• Nutritional yeast
• Frank’s hot sauce
• Garlic salt
• Rosemary and garlic
• Lemon zest
• Chili powder
• Cayenne pepper

How to make Air Fryer Frozen Broccoli

1. First, pour half of a bag (about 6 ounces) of frozen broccoli florets into a large mixing bowl.
2. Spray olive oil or avocado oil on the broccoli. When using frozen broccoli, you’ll want to do this quickly because it can freeze and clump up. 
3. Next add salt, pepper, and any other toppings you prefer. Then toss and mix well in the large bowl. 
4. Now, you’ll add the broccoli into your air fryer basket in a single layer.
5. Finally, cook the frozen broccoli in the air fryer at 400 degrees f for 20 minutes of cook time, opening to toss every few minutes. 

Tips on how to make the best crispy broccoli

• Nutritional yeast is one of my favorite seasonings to add to frozen vegetables because it makes for a great bread-like coating, has a buttery-nutty flavor, and adds a little protein.
• To get the crispy texture, it’s important that the broccoli cooks at a high temperature and in a single layer–it allows the heat to circulate better and cook more evenly. If you have a small air fryer you might not be able to make the whole batch in a single time.
• If you’d rather not spray oil on the vegetables, that’s fine, but watch for them to become dry.
• Remember that you might lose some seasoning at the bottom of the air fryer. Plan for that and add a little extra at the end of your cook time if you’d like. 
• Think outside the box! Frozen vegetables in the air fryer can be the best way to get those veggies in in a low carb way.
• Sometimes I have leftover broccoli from a veggie platter, and air frying is a great way to use it up in even less time. If you’re cooking fresh broccoli the temperature stays the same but the total cook time goes down to just 6 minutes.

One of my favorite recipes for Air Fryer Frozen Broccoli

Broccoli with Balsamic & Parmesan

Ingredients:

• One half of a 12 ounce bag of frozen broccoli
• Olive or Avocado oil spray
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast, panko breadcrumbs, or homemade breadcrumbs
• 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• Parmesan cheese, as an optional garnish

Directions:

1. Pour half the bag (about 6 ounces) of frozen broccoli into a bowl.
2. Spray olive oil on top of broccoli. If using frozen broccoli, do this quickly because it’ll freeze and clump up. 
3. Add nutritional yeast (optional, but it makes a great bread-like coating) and balsamic on top of it. Toss and mix well in the bowl. 
4. Cook frozen broccoli in the air fryer at 400º for 20 minutes, opening to toss every few minutes. 

Looking for the Best Air Fryer?

While I prefer the Ninja Foodi to use as my air fryer, you can easily use an Instant Pot with an air fryer lid or a Mealthy CrispLid. If you have a convection oven, simply use that–it’s the original air fryer :)

It doesn’t matter which air fryer model you have, as long as you learn to cook with it.

Healthy Eating Plans

21 Day Fix/Ultimate Portion Fix

3/4 Green Container for the broccoli. The spray oil amount is negligible but if you’d rather omit it entirely you can do that too.

Nutritional yeast is free if you’re using one serving, but 1/2 cup will count for about 1/2 red container (this is an educated guess on my part, as nutritional yeast is not on the food list).

If you’d rather not use nutritional yeast, you can use whole wheat panko and count 1 yellow container for 1/2 cup, or use 6 Triscuts, crunched up, for 1 yellow container. 

Weight Watchers

Most vegetables are free on Weight Watchers, depending on the myWW plan you’re on. The breading and fats are where your points will come in.

These points for these optional toppings are the same on Purple, Green, and Blue Plans:

• 1/2 cup of Nutritional Yeast is 2 points (new 2022/2023 points plan is 1)
• 1 tbsp of butter is 5 points (new 2022/2023 points plan is 6)
• Olive oil cooking spray is zero points
• 1/2 cup of panko whole wheat breadcrumbs is 5 points (new 2022/2023 points plan is 2)
• 1/4 cup of Frank’s Original Red Hot is zero points
• 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar is 1 point (new 2022/2023 points plan is 1)

More delicious veggie recipes

• Oven Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Teriyaki Sauce
• Buffalo Air Fryer Cauliflower
• Air Fryer Eggplant
• Baked Carrot French Fries
• Vegan Breakfast Hash
• Perfect Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes