Can someone please confirm my understanding of these or correct my misunderstanding.
As far as I can work out, air fryers are simply very compact convection ovens. No magic, just a far smaller cavity that a "normal" oven.
Is that basically it?
Yes, timers, "modes" etc, but basically just a small convection oven?
Background that can be ignored:
Our main cooker is a dual fuel Smeg range thing, with the oven being one enormous cavity. Being Smeg it's unreliable and I have to replace things but at least parts availability is good; I've elements and hinges due in from Italy in a few days.
Mrs Gyp would like us to get a new one with 2 ovens so we can use the small one to do smaller meals as there's just 2 of us at home now. That's not as easy as it sounds though, as the electric supply would not support an all-electric oven & hob, and the existing gas supply doesn't meet current installation requirements. It wouldn't "just" be a couple of grand on the oven, it would require a lot of infrastructure expense that I'd rather not incur if I can avoid it.
So I'm thinking keep maintaining the existing cooker for as long as I can/until we need a new kitchen and use the big oven for Sunday dinners etc where capacity is important, and get an air fryer for during-the-week oven duties.
But that only works if it isn't basically just a small convection oven.
Yes you are correct. I think for 2 people it could work well.
You could look at a Ninja Speedi also, which is an AF but also a 'one pot' cooker. Never going to cook up 5* recipes but for week night meals that are quick, don't create a load of mess etc then quite handy
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They are fan ovens, and the air speed is much higher than a conventional oven
Basically two types of 'air frier'.
Those with (usually 2) draws are as you say effectively small fan convection ovens.
Others like the Ninja (which we have) are more versatile - air fry, saute, pressure cook etc but requires bit of juggling to cook 2 things.
An alternative might to get a combined microwave/convection/grill oven.
I have just joined the air fryer revolution.
I found it to be a voyage of exploration.
I bought a basic Tefal one-bucket model. It is indeed just an oven. It differs from my electric cooker fan oven inasmuch as the fan blasts air at the selected temperature at a fierce rate, whereas the fan oven just circulates the heated air to remove, er, hotspots.
I am finding that I use the air fryer for skinny chips, roast vegetables, joints of meat (never had as nice a gammon joint), and am expecting success with sausages, mealy puddings, and a small whole chicken.
It also is very useful for re-heating anything involving pastry - pornish casties, the pies I make from garden fruits, rag puddings etc. The air fryer renders them hot and crusty as opposed to the previous microwave re-heat which rendered them hot and soggy.
I am confidently expecting to acquire more air fryer prowess.
The big one for me so far is that by deploying silicon liners and baking paper, clean-up afterwards is minimal.
There is a comprehensive air fryer thread on TZ already- well worth tracking down.
Depending on the type of dishes you put in the oven usually, a Kamado style BBQ would work too if your garden has a sheltered patio. More fun, too
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Hi
Word of warning....see: https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.p...di-be-careful-!
It caused circa <£20k worth of damage to our house.
Best Neil
I was thinking about that the other day. Do you think a single block surge protector like this would have avoided it? Not victim blaming, just thinking for myself.Originally Posted by flame
https://www.belkin.com/uk/surgecube-.../P-BSV103.html
Surge protector is for avoiding voltage spikes in the supply - from damaging downstream electronics. I don't think that is the issue with these air fryers.
I use a wifi-operated pass-through plug to mine - which means I switch it off when the air fryer is not in use, and you can always set the timer on the pass through for (say) 20mins so that it isolates it then - if you forget yourself
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0983JZP...roduct_details
They will also give you a record of power consumption - if that is of interest.
Perfect thank you. I have a few of these from Wemo and Kasa and didn’t think of that.
They a ork great on the Christmas tree lights and in the last house for only turning on the garage door when I wanted to open/close it.
If you use an assistant of any kind you can just shout Turn X on for Y minutes.
^^^ Only if the fire was caused by a fault (spike etc) on the mains line.
Won’t prevent fire caused by faulty appliance.
(In response to Wiley’s question).
So what's the frying angle – I've read chips are better cooked in an air fryer but if it's just a small fan oven how is it any different to cooking chips in a larger fan oven oven?
I poo pooed an air fryer for ages until the lad did some roast spuds in one.
Go buy a gammon joint… about a kilo.
Air fryer for an hour in foil, remove and glaze with honey marmalade and English mustard
Back in for another 15-20 at 180
Sweet Jesus!
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Yup - I've done that for years and it avoids you opening the garage door with the remote in your pocket.
It circulates the air much faster, the chips are closer to the overhead element and they dry out the chips less. Some older air fryers had a circular form and a stirrer that automatically tumbled the chips/chicken wings/sausages etc - for more evenly-cooked items (but they are a bit outdated now)
I normally sous-vide gammon joints then finish off in oven - but will give your method a go, thanks!
Fryer is a misnomer. To "air fry" chips in an air fryer you coat them with oil before placing them in the bucket.
The benefit is entirely that less electricity is used by the air fryer than by the fan oven. Also if you deploy a silicon bucket or parchment bucket then cleaning up is easier afterwards.
For the purposes of the tape - I am blessed in that my present wife makes the most delicious chips using deep-fry-in-a-chip-pan method. They are unsurpassed by anything that I have ever had anywhere else. There is no way that anything that delicious will ever come out of my air fryer. Apart that is when we have a surplus of Delicious Chips we freeze them and when re-heated in the air fryer they are just as delicious. Probably they would be the same re-heated in a fan oven, but we use less power and a couple of minutes sees the defrosted Delicious Chips back to their virgin former glory.
Last edited by unclealec; 2nd February 2024 at 13:40.
Yes they are basically a smaller oven . The term air fryer does them no justice.
They regulate temperature better than a large oven, they use less power than a regular oven due to the smaller space to heat, they don’t need a 20 minute preheat . I have had great results at home with our Ninga over our fan smeg double oven. Great for my 3 person family. People will poo poo them but I suspect most of those haven’t tried one.
There is no smugness which can compare to using the Sena on your helmet to tell Google Assistant “turn on the garage door for 5 minutes” and then opening that little flap on the GSA tank for to push the open/close button for the garage door. I miss it.
It’s a hairdryer in a box.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
you also are able to take out the drawer and give them a shake, much better than poking at them with a fork or something in an oven and invariably burning yourself
The air fryer name is effectively derived from the fact that it forces the hot air around your food so hard that the rate of heat transfer into your food is much greater than in any type of oven (fan or convention) which merely wafts the air in the general direction of your food.
So they reckoned it is more like frying than it is roasting. But it is roasting, just on steroids.
The advantages are that you heat up a lot less oven than an oven, so it is more efficient with you leccy.
It takes less time than an oven because the heat is forced in there, meaning that the surface temperature of your food rises faster, and it cooks through faster.
This has the associated problem (easily solved) that things can over-cook or burn on the top surfaces, so shaking your food to turn it over is a must (smaller stuff like chip, wings and so forth) or protecting it (foil or parchment, see above, for larger stuff).
We use ours a lot. even for simple stuff like a great baked potatoes. Cook them in the microwave in a few minutes, then crisp up the outsides in the air fryer. As good as a baked tatty gets, in a fraction of the time an oven does it.
Hadn't spotted that before. Awful.
I've been torn between the Ninja or the asymmetric Tefal. Looks like we have a winner.
Forgot to say…back in for 15-20 minutes but out of the foil.
I now own an air fryer.
If it doesn't work out for you, you can blame TZ.
We’re on our third air fryer, the first was only a 3.8ltr which we realised was too small for the two of us. So we brought a bigger 5.5ltr Cosori which we loved until we saw that the manufacturers had started to produce bigger models. We now have an Instant vortex 8.5ltr, one large drawer or you can divide it into two smaller ovens with separate settings that will synchronise timings so pretty versatile.
As others have said it’s definitely the best way to cook a gammon.
Last edited by bigvic; 3rd February 2024 at 09:22.
Went for the Tefal 2-bin as expected to go through the same experience if I bought the small one
Nice to know it will overturn Brexit too
I can chuck it on SC with my too small boots
Be careful though if they are the chunky McCain duck fat coated ones, as the fat sits in the bottom of the pan vs something like a stingfellow type chip / fries.
I did a shake / toss with the duck fat ones, and only by sheer luck was my hoodie sleeve coated in fat & not my skin; not one burn but was f***ing hot until I got the hoodie off.
Hoodie relegated to garden wear, but shows the scale of fat damage on the sleeve. Very lucky escape and turned those chips over by hand after that incident.
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