Gas oven vs air fryer

[Emsypops]

I keep seeing how popular air fryers are and how they are so much cheaper than electric ovens. But is that also true if you have a gas oven?

I think not. I have a gas oven and I use it when I can fill it. But I have an air fryer too because we are a four adult household, all at home, but on different shifts, so eating at different times. Husband doesn't work, so he's on cooking Mon-Fri and he likes the convenience of air fryer. Summer holidays when I wasn't working, we hardly used it.

Term time, I batch cook at the weekend and freeze individual portions. So, we'll use the air fryer Mon-Fri to cook lasagne or fish cakes (on menu this week) because they're ready in 15 mins and it takes (at least) that long for the oven to preheat. Or if son #2 is home, and he doesn't want lasagne or is out, he'll put some burgers and chips in when he gets home.

Weekends, I cook, and we're all eating about 6pm, so I'll use the oven to cook something like pizzas or a pie, but I'll also make some rolls, cookies, a cake or whatever for the week.

Oven baked rolls done in 8 mins no pre heat
stew 20 mins but needs pressure to build
whole chicken 40 mins total
bacon 7 mins in the air fryer

I should imagine it’s a lot cheaper as you don’t need the whole oven or grill on warming up.

Looking on line

air fryer £50 a year, gas cooker £120 a year

Like most things, it depends. Oven chips take 15 mins in my air fryer. In my gas oven they'd take 25, plus 10 mins to heat up. I expect the airfryer is cheaper for those (and the chips are far nicer too). Airfryers tend to cook quicker, but bigger items need longer for the heat to cook through the middle, so I'm dubious of putting large items in there. If I'm doing a (precooked) pie I'll microwave it for a few mins first (take it out of the foil obvs) to get some heat into the middle. Then the airfryer to finish off and crisp the pastry.

And I often find I can't get everything in the airfryer (cooking for 4 people), at which point I end up firing up the gas oven at the same time, so any advantage is then promptly lost!

A lot of the energy with a gas/traditional oven is used getting it up to temperature, once it's there they use less gas to maintain the temp. So heating it up to cook something quick (eg a pizza) isn't very economical. That's where an airfryer is more efficient.