Help me understand the appeal of air fryers

[labracockapoodle]

I've never had one. I've never felt like I needed one as everything that can be cooked in an air fryer, I can already cook in the oven or in a pan. Are they really healthier or cheaper? What makes them so popular?

It is basically a small oven, the air fryer bit means it has a fan. Things cook faster, so if it says 200 at 20 minutes for a conventional oven it would generally be 160 and 16 minutes. You are heating a much smaller space to a lower temperature for less time. The "preheat" is literally 3 minutes for my Ninja 2 drawer. But I follow the instructions on the packet of food because a lot of it has Air Fryer instructions.

Mine does have the probe so I put 2 whole chickens, one in each drawer, weighing 1.7kg as they fit nicely and then the probe works out when the chicken is done.

If I am cooking salmon I don't need a whole oven, I just need a shelf and a baking tray that fits 4 salmon fillets on, a complete waste of energy to heat a full oven for that. So I use the Air Fryer.

As a family of 4 adults I couldn't cook say 4 chicken kievs and chips in it because it isn't big enough. Instead I would use the air fryer plus our combi microwave which is also a mini oven. We went for the 2 drawer as sometimes I just want to bake 2 from the freezer pain au chocolates. If I went for the large drawer I could section it off but depending on what you use it for you need to wash the entire drawer.

So watch some review videos, there are lots and see if it is something that would work for you. We only bought one this year.

Great for reheating chicken/prawn/pork balls left over from a Chinese takeaway. The sweet & sour sauce can go in the microwave, but that never worked for the balls!

you can definitely burn in an air fryer, especially if you’re using liners, they can catch fire

Bloody love mine, use it every day. Was skeptical too,
For some reason just feels so much easier than using the oven.

I was super sceptical, but now we have one I often wonder how we did without it! Faster than an oven, uses less power, quick and easy clean up. DS can cook stuff easily. Just a great machine.

Is the little things that you don’t expect. When I cook salmon in the oven, you get that white pooling on the top but you don’t get that in an air fryer. It cooks differently. It’s got a delicious brown crunch and super soft, melt-in-the mouth inside. Are use French fries a lot and it cooks them much faster, as well as as much more crispy. I still use my brand-new oven and find disappointingly the fries come out a little bit limp.

But I do keep my oven, because the air fryer, even though it has three shelves in it like an oven, is much smaller and won’t do a complete roast dinner including Yorkshire puddings in one go. Rest and happens to be my favourite food, so it will always have me there, until, I believe, one day they will make air fryer ovens as standard instead of normal ovens.

My particular model has a rotating basket for Chips or anything that you want to keep rolling, and it does work like a dream when I can be bothered to use it. The same goes for kebab sticks that rotate while cooking. I have to say they are the best kebabs and I always use it for kebabs now.

an air fryer is meant to be a lot more cost-effective, not only because it uses less electricity, but also food is cooked for a shorter period of time. My perfect oven would be an air fryer and a microwave, in two separate areas so you can do the two at the same time. But hey, that’s just me.

High temperature cooking of starchy foods can lead to the introduction of compounds linked to cancer, which is more likely in an ait fryer than an oven, and non stick air fryers like all non stick cooking utensils, will expose you to chemicals linked to various health problems. But, an air fryer will expose you to them more as they’re used more often.

I was given one shortly after my husband died, but got rid of it. It was an unsightly bit of clutter on the work surface, and while it was quicker than a conventional oven for many things I am not so time poor that that was relevant. I was also not keen on the taste of food cooked in one. They are claimed to use less electricity, though as they run at similar wattages to an oven, which in the whole is better insulated, I don’t think the savings can be as high as some claim. If you eat a lot of what I call beige food then maybe they have a place. Just my experience!

I too have a two drawer Ninja and rarely use the main oven now.

i wanted to add that if you do decide to get one and are not in a big hurry they are often heavily reduced in the Black Friday sales.

I don’t agree about them being for beige food.

We eat very little processed food and everything cooks really well in the Ninja. Salmon cooked in the air fryer is wonderful.

I came very late to the air fryer party. I previously had a halogen oven, and wasn't sure there'd be any benefit. How wrong was i!

Nowadays I have five. 🤣 (Including two small ones for travelling at home and abroad - I'm Coeliac).

They're just brilliant.

With regard to the poster who was unsure if they use less energy - I use them regularly on my big solar generators and can see that they absolutely do. A"spend" of around 400kW to cook the evening meal is not unusual.

@ThatFlightyTemptressAdventurethere are two Amazon Prime days coming up next week on 7th-8th October as well.

I read these threads and then go out and look at buying one but then think when would I use it? Even the large ones look too small. I cook everything from scratch and I don’t know what I would cook in it.

I’m off to John Lewis tomorrow so will take another look.

We have the Ninja Crispi after years of saying we don’t need an air fryer.It is great use it most days great for fishcakes,sausages reheating leftovers.Glass containers go in the dishwasher.Looks good and takes up little space.

Absolutely love ours - combines all the best aspects of a microwave and an oven. Frozen chips, toasties, roast meat, sausage rolls all cook more quickly than in an oven and taste better. You can also prove dough in it.

Thankyou, and to @Tryingtokeepgoing , I knew there was a reason I’d swerved air fryers, but they obviously are much vaunted as useful.

I have a new ish AA energy rated oven and with 5 of us there’s not a lot of point. I generally use it for sausages but it sits in the utility room. I don’t see the point of the massive ones - just use the oven. I’m hanging onto ours as I think we’ll use it when it’s just dh and I and it’ll make more sense but when I’m feeding 5-6 people it’s not that helpful. I use it for chips sometimes, but we don’t have them often.

I have a little (3.8l) drawer Cosori. I often eat separately to the rest of the folk in my household, so its fab for me - salmon, chicken breasts, sweet potato fries, falafel, defrosting bagels and pittas, sausages, veg like asparagus, egg muffins etc. Hardly 'beige food'. I was skeptical but it was on offer on Amazon, so gave it a go.

I don’t really get it either. It’s great for chips and beige freezer food for the kids. BIL cooks whole meals in his, but you can’t do that in what is essentially a single oven tray (we have a dual drawer one) for a family of 4. It takes the whole thing just to cook chips for us. I cook everything else in the oven. I think if you are single person living alone and not fussy, it does probably save on energy costs.

generally what I cook isn’t oven cooked and most of what is oven cooked wasn’t really something to fit in the air fryer, leg of lamb, side of salmon, lasagne etc.

This is why I have held back on buying an air fryer. I don't use the oven that often and when I do it is to bake cakes or make recipes from the Roasting Tin recipe books, which require a large roasting tin where vegetables can be roasted in one layer. I tend to use my wok more than any other piece of cooking equipment TBH. Besides, I don't have room to store an air fryer.

I personally don't have one, and don't really have any reason to get one.

People say it's easier. It's easy using an oven, microwave or toaster. I don't like more clutter on my work surfaces.

Electricity costs fair enough.

We cook everything from scratch using Gousto so we'd barely use one.

But yea, I get it. I just don't want one.

They do jacket potatoes really quickly and with a lovely crispy skin.

We cook everything from scratch - no beige foods here as I'm coeliac and he has familial hypercholesterolemia.

Chicken, beef, lamb, salmon, vegetables, all go in and come out perfectly. The pot one is used for pressure cooking pulses, making yoghurt, bone broth and anything else you can think of.

And it's still cheaper than removal/disposal/installation and essentially rebuilding the kitchen to meet current safety standards for ovens from when it was built thirteen years ago.

It’s a small oven. Heats up faster and is cheaper when cooking smaller amounts. Can get hotter than the oven for things like chips.

Thats it. You don’t NEED one but they’re handy.

oven takes forever to heat up and then to cook things. I use air fryer for everything

First off, it is NOT A FRYER. Stupid name for them. It doesn't do what a deep fat fryer does and doesn't "fry" anything.

It's a small convection oven. Incredibly energy efficient for families of four or under, less so for larger groups. We've saved the cost twice over in reduced electricity bills.

If you buy a decent one with a probe and a synch button it's very convenient. The temperature probe means it cooks meat and fish until perfect and then stops.

Synch button means you can cook the pie and chips in separate drawers needed different times and it ensures everything is ready at th same time. (DP and DS2 love pie and chips, but basically it allows you to cook two different things and walk away while the machine does the thinking for you)

It reheats pizzas or croissants or whatever you like very quickly and unlike in the microwave, they don't go soggy.

Very easy to clean, can roast veg or potatoes with minimal oil and mess, ditto sausages and hash browns and other fried breakfast foods.

It's rubbish for baking as the fan heat dries cakes out - and most won't take 20cm sandwich tins anyway. No good for large items or things that need a long, low temperature.

I mostly cook on the hob but DP uses it all the whole and the kids use it to reheat stuff.