We’re all looking for ways to make Christmas dinner easier – and if you’ve got an air fryer, festive food could be a whole lot simpler. Christmas dinner normally requires a lot of effort to pull together all the starters, turkey and side dishes, and chef Poppy O’Toole says she’ll “definitely” be using her air fryer to help everything come together. Michelin-trained O’Toole, 29, is something of an early adopter of air fryers – she first fell in love with them in 2018, and says: “I was working in kitchens at the time, and I was like, I don’t know how chefs are going to feel about this. It might fade, but I was intrigued – and it’s got bigger and bigger.” She adds: “It was so easy to get on board with because of how convenient they are. As a chef, I wasn’t at home a lot – so my partner could use it really easily without me having to be over his shoulder.” They’ve got speed and energy efficiency going for them, O’Toole suggests, and she’s even dedicated her most recent cookbook to air fryer recipes. Her air fryer will go into overdrive on Christmas day, “because I need all the space for everything”, the Worcestershire-based chef says. “I’m going to be feeding a lot of people.” “There’s not enough space to do everything, but what it’s really good at is giving you the capability to do more stuff at the same time,” she notes. “So you’re not just relying on the oven and the hob – you’ve also got this other piece of equipment, which is amazing at cooking things and it can be done quicker and more energy efficiently.” Before diving in, there are a few mistakes O’Toole warns against making with your air fryer on 25 December. “Make sure you put a timer on. I’ve done that a few times, where I’ve gone, it comes out in 20 minutes or whatever and you go, ‘yeah, I’ll come back in a few minutes, it’ll be fine’. And I’ve left it in there the whole time and it’s burned to a crisp.” The second thing to watch out for? “Don’t overcrowd,” she says. “It can be very easy to throw it all in, it’ll be fine. But it doesn’t work that way – the whole point is that the air circulation gets around everything, so it needs a gap where that can happen.” And if you’re looking to impress your guests with beautiful-looking food, O’Toole recommends keeping your air fryer clean. “This is another thing that I do very regularly, and I think a lot of people do – I don’t wash it enough, I don’t clean it enough. I end up getting these little dark bits on the rest of my food, which is fine when you’re cooking for yourself – that doesn’t matter. “But when you’re cooking for other people, if you’ve got family coming over, you want to make sure it’s the best. So make sure in between each thing you cook, you give it a little wipe down.” Interested in using your air fryer this Christmas? This is what O’Toole recommends doing… Starters “I always like little nibbly bits on Christmas,” admits O’Toole – and these can be easily whipped up in the air fryer. “It’s something a little bit different around lunchtime, because I have my Christmas dinner a bit late – I have it more as a dinner around three, so around 12 you’re getting a bit peckish. So I do some lovely little nibbles – like crispy wontons, spring rolls, samosas, that sort of thing. They’re really tasty and fill everybody up, without having to do much.” If you’re feeling industrious you can make these yourself, but they’re just as delicious from frozen – and you can save all your cooking efforts for the main meal. The main event For O’Toole, the best way to use your air fryer is for all the festive sides. “It’s really good for roasted parsnips, roasted carrots, sprouts or chestnuts,” she says. You can cook the parsnips and carrots together. “And then they can be ready and waiting for when you want them – you can get them into a tray, and once they’re cooked, you can keep them at the bottom of the oven or in a tray that you can warm back up”. And one of the most important parts of any Christmas dinner: “I’ve got to say roast potatoes are very good in there, and you don’t have to pre-boil them – so that’s given you more space on the hob.” How can you pull off perfectly crispy roasties in the air fryer? “Chop them up, get them in a bowl, add a tablespoon of water, a little bit of oil and salt – give it a mix, so we’ve got a bit of moisture on them. Then you get them into the air fryer and cook them about 160C or 170C for about 20 to 30 minutes, so they’re a little bit cooked, then you whack it up to about 200C to get the golden crispy outside.” Dessert While O’Toole doesn’t plan on making Christmas pudding in the air fryer this year, there are plenty of sweet treats you can do in there instead. Her sister will be clamouring for a pecan and pretzel blondies recipe (or you can try any variation on brownies you like – even mince pies would work), and O’Toole adds: “Custard tarts – they’re so simple and something about doing them in the oven is always terrifying to me, but being able to put them in the air fryer for literally a few minutes is perfect. “That’s definitely something I’ll be doing.” ‘Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook’ (Bloomsbury Publishing, £20). 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The United States is expected to announce it is sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to help its military push back Russian forces entrenched along the front lines. The administration of Joe Biden is set to say that it will send thousands of them as part of a new military aid package worth $800m (£630m). The move will likely trigger outrage from some allies and humanitarian groups that have long opposed the use of cluster bombs. Proponents argue that both Russia and Ukraine have already been using the controversial weapon in Ukraine and that the munitions the US will provide have a reduced dud rate, meaning there will be far fewer unexploded rounds that can result in unintended civilian deaths. Here is a look at what cluster munitions are, where they have been used and why the U.S. plans to provide them to Ukraine now. What is a cluster munition? A cluster munition is a bomb that opens in the air and releases smaller "bomblets" across a wide area. The bomblets are designed to take out tanks and equipment, as well as troops, hitting multiple targets at the same time. The munitions are launched by the same artillery weapons that Western allies have already provided to Ukraine for the war — such as howitzers — and the type of cluster munition that the US is planning to send is based on a common 155 mm shell that is already widely in use across the battlefield. Why are they so controversial? In previous conflicts, cluster munitions have had a high dud rate, which meant that thousands of the smaller unexploded bomblets remained behind and killed and maimed people decades later. The US last used its cluster munitions in battle in Iraq in 2003, and decided not to continue using them as the conflict shifted to more urban environments with more dense civilian populations. On Thursday, Brigadier General Pat Ryder – the Pentagon press secretary – said the US Defense Department has "multiple variants" of the munitions and "the ones that we are considering providing would not include older variants with [unexploding] rates that are higher than 2.35 per cent." A convention banning the use of cluster bombs has been joined by more than 120 countries, which agreed not to use, produce, transfer or stockpile the weapons and to clear them after they've been used. The US, Russia and Ukraine haven't signed on. Why provide them now? For more than a year the US has dipped into its own stocks of traditional 155 howitzer munitions and sent more than two million rounds to Ukraine. Allies across the globe, including the UK, have provided hundreds of thousands more. A 155 mm round can strike targets 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 kilometres) away, making them a munition of choice for Ukrainian ground troops trying to hit enemy targets from a distance. Ukrainian forces are burning through thousands of the rounds a day battling the Russians. Yehor Cherniev, a member of Ukraine's parliament, told reporters at a German Marshall Fund event in the US this spring that Kyiv would likely need to fire 7,000 to 9,000 of the rounds daily in intensified counteroffensive fighting. Providing that many puts substantial pressure on U.S. and allied stocks. The cluster bomb can destroy more targets with fewer rounds, and since the US hasn't used them in conflict since Iraq, it has large amounts of them in storage it can access quickly, said Ryan Brobst, a research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. A March 2023 letter from top House and Senate Republicans to the Biden administration said the US may have as many as three million cluster munitions available for use, and urged the White House to send the munitions to alleviate pressure on American war supplies. "Cluster munitions are more effective than unitary artillery shells because they inflict damage over a wider area," Mr Brobst said. "This is important for Ukraine as they try to clear heavily fortified Russian positions." Tapping into the US stores of cluster munitions could address Ukraine's shell shortage and alleviate pressure on the 155 mm stockpiles in the US and elsewhere, Mr Brobst said. Is using cluster bombs a war crime? Use of cluster bombs itself does not violate international law, but using them against civilians can be a violation. As in any strike, determining a war crime requires looking at whether the target was legitimate and if precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties. "The part of international law where this starts playing [a role], though, is indiscriminate attacks targeting civilians," Human Rights Watch's associate arms director Mark Hiznay said. "So that's not necessarily related to the weapons, but the way the weapons are used." Where have cluster bombs been used? The bombs have been deployed in many recent conflicts. The US initially considered cluster bombs an integral part of its arsenal during the invasion of Afghanistan that began in 2001, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The group estimated that the US-led coalition dropped more than 1,500 cluster bombs in Afghanistan during the first three years of the conflict. The Defense Department had been due to stop use of any cluster munitions with a rate of unexploded ordnance greater than 1 per cent, by 2019. But the Trump administration rolled back that policy, allowing commanders to approve use of such munitions. Syrian government troops have often used cluster munitions — supplied by Russia — against opposition strongholds during that country's civil war, frequently hitting civilian targets and infrastructure. And Israel used them in civilian areas in south Lebanon, including during the 1982 invasion. During the month-long 2006 war with Hezbollah, HRW and the United Nations accused Israel of firing as many as four million cluster munitions into Lebanon. That left unexploded ordnance that threatens Lebanese civilians to this day. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has been criticized for its use of cluster bombs in the war with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels that has ravaged the southern Arabian country. In 2017, Yemen was the second deadliest country for cluster munitions after Syria, according to the UN. Children have been killed or maimed long after the munitions originally fell, making it difficult to know the true toll. In the 1980s, the Russians made heavy use of cluster bombs during their 10-year invasion of Afghanistan. As a result of decades of war, the Afghan countryside remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. 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