The special pan allows air flow at the bottom. A normal pan being solid won’t. And for people like me, air flow on 5/6 surfaces is freaking good enough.
It doesn’t take half an hour to pre heat, it doesn’t heat up the whole house, and I’m not sending my power bill through the roof every time I want to make a meal for one person lol
Just tested my air frier and it’s takes about 2 minutes, but obviously, it’s way more energy efficient. Plus easier clean up. I can just throw a bunch of fries and chicken strips in there and it’s good to go. Whereas with an oven I’d probably need to buy a special rack or something so all the oils don’t stick to the bottom of the fries. Plus heating up all that empty space!
It’s possible he’s running it at 120v if the electrician did a bad job in the kitchen. 400v ovens are fairly common where I live and can run on 240v in a pinch (even if it’s not recommended).
The only large appliances that aren’t running 220-240v in the US are the refrigerator and dishwasher .Ovens, washing machines, tumble dryers, furnaces, and water heaters are all on 240 volts.
Most people don’t even know how to use their microwave properly. You really think they know how to use their convection oven properly? It’s not WHAT it does, it’s that an air fryer is usually simple and has shit like “turn dial here to cook a chicken”.
People like it because they don’t know what they’re doing and it does it for them.
I’m not here to convert you, but this is just as dismissive as OP. Yes it’s a convection oven. We also have a full size convection oven. It does not cook things as dramatically faster as an air fryer does. It’s not the same experience at all.
I say this as someone who literally said, “so it’s just a small convection oven” until we got one. We have used it literally every day since getting it ~2 years ago.
It’s not just any of these things:
Toaster oven
Small convection oven
Small oven
There is so much air moving around in an air fryer that parchment paper without food holding it down gets immediately sucked against the circulating fan filter (which we learned the hard way) and lighter bits of food (like cooked bacon that you might toss in for a quick reheat) will swirl around inside the cook basket.
It may not be for everyone, but it absolutely does cook food faster than in a regular oven, sometimes by an astonishing amount. We have a short but significant list of things that we also think are noticeably better from an air fryer, and nothing I can think of that we’ve tried comes out worse.
Frozen stuff works great, everything from fries to eggrolls.
You will start to get an idea how long things take after you have it. Many things now have airfryer instructions, or there are lots of “how to make xxx in an airfryer” articles.
Generic airfryer instructions are usually pretty close for ours, but any given model may have its own cookbook with times for different sorts of things (ours does) and after awhile you’ll get a feel for how to nudge generic instructions to fit your model.
For a very small number of specific kinds of breaded things, I’ll spritz them with cooking spray when they go in to help them get more like they were fried in oil, but that’s really personal preference and I only do it on a couple of things.
Get one with a big enough basket. Things need to be cooked in a single layer. You can pack it pretty full, but single layer is important.
And convects much more powerfully and efficiently since it’s shaped like a cylinder instead of a cube and the fan strength to volume ratio is way better.
And it moves way more air than a normal oven, thus removing water vapor faster. This water vapor that partly steams the food, resulting in moisture saturated air that in turn prevents more moisture from escaping, is the main difference between a frying pan and an oven. A deep fryer replaces the water with oil, an air fryer just extracts the water quicker. Both prevent the food from cooking in water or steam, resulting in a crispy texture.
it moves way more air than a normal oven, thus removing water vapor faster.
Says that the sentence you quoted applies less with an air fryer than a conventional oven.
This water vapor that partly steams the food [is removed more slowly in a conventional oven], resulting in moisture saturated air that in turn prevents more moisture from escaping
Everyone misquoting the guy telling you that you read the sentence wrong, and ignoring that you already said the breasts came out juicier in an air fryer. (they do)
Oh, yeah. It’s been a long while since I’ve lived in that environment. You’re probably right that most cheap stand-alone stovetop/oven units don’t have a convection setting.
The clean function locks the door, cranks up the heat, and burns off all the crud in the oven. You can vacuum any ashes left after it cools down. Its awesome if you’re lazy like me. I have zero interest in bringing out the Easy Off and elbow length rubber gloves.
I’ve seen them commonly in homes in Europe, but I’ve not seen them once in the US. But even convection ovens are not as effective as air fryers because they’re not as efficiently designed. They use the same principle, but the shape and fan power to volume ratio in air fryers is much better. Also, not all air fryers are the same, some are way more effective than others.
This is the big thing. So many times we want to heat up some left-overs and that would turn soggy in a microwave, but heating up the oven to reheat a few square inches of food is a vast waste of energy.
These take up a lot of space, though. I think one of those double ovens, where one is only tall enough for one tray, would be ideal. Convection, of course, but I haven’t seen a built-in without a convection mode in years.
An air fryer is fantastic for things you’d normally cook in an oven, but it gets them way more crispy without all the oil. You can even “deep fry” by spritzing some oil on top.
If your oven has a convection feature, you can just use that, but it’s also way bigger (read: more energy to cook small portions).
Ok I hear you and offer the far superior, microwave + convection toaster oven (air fryer toaster oven ok just don’t get a bad one)
Toaster oven beats the issue of huge amount of wasted energy and heat and convection is basically 80% of the way to air fryer and also will make general baking faster and more even. So you can use them in place of the oven for lots of things.
Cheap air fryer toaster ovens are often crap though and more just garbage air fryer that opens differently. Don’t buy those.
Any idea if Cuisinart and Ninja air fryers are decent? I’m looking to upgrade to a larger one, and they have ones that look like toasters (Cuisinart and Ninja), but they’re advertised as air fryers.
I don’t really need a toaster since I just toast with my oven (has a “Toast” setting that uses the broiler), and even then that’s pretty rare.
Cuisinart are perfectly awesome toaster ovens and even nice convection but their air frying is mostly just ok. I think their budget options are their best stuff since will work just as well and is as reliable as Cuisinart gets.
Ninja has some kind of secret sauce cause their air frying capabilities in their toaster ovens puts single purpose air fryers to shame. Shockingly good but I am always concerned about longevity since they always seem seconds away from throwing the baby out with the bathwater if they think they have a new device to sell. But these toaster ovens do seem to last. And it’s hard to make them proprietary like other products.
Tl;Dr: if you mostly just care about having a larger more capable air fryer ninja is your answer and they work great. If you want max size the Foodi XL is good and can be got on sale for around the same price as the smaller flip up one but is far more usable as an oven and more.
Edit: I own the new Ninja double oven air toaster oven and love it but I also bought it from a store that sells dented or returned items for half price and it’s my 4th air fryer toaster oven I have ever owned.
I have the Cuisinart model basically right under the tier of the one linked. It doesn’t have a digital display, but it has knobs for controls and timers.
I absolutely love my machine and I’ve had it for about 4-5 years now. It toasts, bakes, and air fries. It does all of those things pretty well. When used to bake, it is so much more efficient than my oven, it is wild. Baking times are lower and the heat up prep time is easily less than half as long if not shorter than the oven, I assume due to the size of the machines.
I would focus on getting an air fryer than can toast and bake as well if you do get one. It fully replaced my toaster, and when reheating food or cooking small batches, I just do not use my oven anymore. Even toasting in it is quick due to the size of the cooking area and location of the pan locations close to the heating elements. It bakes a “take home and bake” style bagel wonderfully, which is now what I’m going to do for breakfast.
I don’t shake air fryer fries at all and they’re still better, but I live in the US where convection ovens are very uncommon in households. That’s why air fryers are so popular here.
It is a small fan forced oven. Good for heating up frozen snacks but usually too small to cope with large families and probably not worth bothering if you have a good oven. Since I have a completely shit oven that cooks unevenly, never the right temp, takes ages to heat and heats the whole house up in summer just to make some chicken nuggets for the kids I think they are awesome. If I actually gave a shit about cooking I probably wouldn’t bother. If was single I would probably still rate the toaster oven as the most versatile benchtop appliance (though the biggest fire risk) followed by sandwich press but if you have to heat up manufactured rendered chicken waste shaped like dinosaurs for kids they are surprisingly practical.
He literally cut one in half and showed how the air flowed and explained why it was different and more akin to deep frying. Maybe watch a video next time before critiquing it.
Just a heads up, the ?si=… part of the youtube url is a tracker linked to you and your youtube history. Youtube will recommend people who click your link other things you watch. The ? and everything afterward can be safely removed and the link will still work.
You mean the Wikipedia article that is literally about convection ovens and has a subheader for air fryers and literally a line where people agree that some convection ovens are better at producing crispier food than air fryers? That smoking barrel of an article?
they are literally just small ovens. They’re toaster ovens with a fan. Or maybe no fan at all, who knows. I don’t have on, on account of the whole oven situation.
I don’t like things on the counter so I’ll continue to use my oven. After 1.5 years, I just figured out that it has a pizza setting that actually works. No more soggy Totino’s for this chick!
air fryer seems like if your oven was smaller and then you had to wash it after every use. and also sometimes it’s made out of plastic (nonstick material)
Air fryers are basically just small convection ovens. If you have an oven then an air fryer does nothing you can’t already do. That said, it does cook some things slightly faster due to the confined space. I’ve found mine will cook a chicken in just over an hour saving maybe 20 or 30 minutes on a regular oven. I guess it also saves energy / money but whether it ever pays for itself is another question.
Air fryer is just pure convenience. I could cook the chicken in the oven and probably have it come out okay. But, I could cook it in the air fryer, have nice and crunchy skin and save a pan.
I find cleaning the air fryer to be a pain. It’s got the rack at the bottom that I have to scrum, and then the catch pan. If I cook a chicken in my cast iron pan in the oven, I have one flat surface to clean, as opposed to 1 flat surface and one complicated surface. What am I missing?
My oven doesn’t even get dirty when I cook a chicken. I haven’t needed to clean mine in the 5 years I’ve lived in my house and we cook multiple times every week.
But every time we use our air fryer, I need to clean it because it’s a mess.
Generally it will cook a lot of things better than consumer ovens because consumer ovens are fucking garbage.
But yeah, it’s just a small convection oven that heats faster and more evenly. I love mine. I mostly only use the oven for things that require a solid tray or don’t do well with the fan in close proximity (mostly certain frozen foods). And baking.
I’ve had multiple airfryers, not against them per se. There are some things they cook better IMO. Cocktail sausages come out well. Whole chickens too. Anything you can fit the relatively small dimensions and either lays flat on the bottom or can withstand agitation/stirring AND has good heat dispersion / circulation. Small portions work better. Generally they’re easy to clean although steel baskets and plastic fixtures on tend to be very flimsy and they don’t last more than a year or two of regular use. I even had an airfryer which had this stirring mechanism in it which supposedly negated the need to turn stuff over but often it just caused some foods to disintegrate into starchy crumbs.
As for consumer ovens, can’t say I’ve had any major issues ever with them, be they electric or gas. They’re less efficient and slower to warm which is their downside. Once they’re up and cooking I think they work fine and are obviously more versatile.
Pick the best tool for the job at hand basically. I think also, that something like an instant pot (or similar) is a better and more versatile device to buy before an airfryer.
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