It’s really a badly marketed product. Its real utility isn’t that it uses less oil, but that it cooks incredibly fast. Essentially an oven on steroids.
It’s made cooking so much easier. I usually toss some boneless chicken in with a light coating of soy sauce and cornflour. While the chicken cooks, I prep a basic Asian sauce on the stovetop.
The chicken and the sauce are both done within 10-15 minutes. Never have to check on the chicken (unlike a pan) or wait too long (unlike an oven). Mix them together and dinner is ready.
I think the marketing is really smart.
It's positioned as a new category of product. Oven on steroids won't sell because people already own ovens. It has to be a distinct appliance otherwise it's competing against a full sized oven. That's not the comparison you want a consumer to make.
The next wave of people buying these things are not going to be fryer junkies looking to cut oil, it's going to be people like me that looked at it and realized instead of waiting 20-40 minutes for my oven to heat up I could throw enough food in the air fryer to finish a dish in 7-12 minutes, which changes the dynamic of how I live my life culinarily for the better by a large margin. With the airfryer I can plan meal timing way less, have less pressure to be in the kitchen earlier, have flexibility to cook something like a roast in the oven on lower heat while polishing off fancy veg or multiple fancy veg (because the run time to cook is so low) in the air fryer, plus I save a lot on cleaning at the end because there aren't multiple big dishes to wash.
The majority of people I know have an air fryer at this point and that includes, of all things, a lot of senior citizens which is a disproportionate amount of my social circle due to my profession.
These things are out there in a big way. Lots of frozen products already have air fryer directions on them specifically.
I think it’s already the open secret that all they really are is a small convection oven.
If they were called 'tiny oven' people probably catch on a bit better.
I have an air fryer which is literally a double walled cooking pot with a fan forced heater bolted on top. It's amazingly fast to cook and trivial to clean since it is small and fits in the sink but i fear many people hearing how good 'air fryers' are might do something dumb and buy an full size fan forced oven that's badged as an 'air fryer' which defeats the whole point.
How's this different from a classic toaster oven? Serious question, I've never used or even seen an air fryer, but I have been using toaster ovens to bake single servings of salmon for over 2 decades.
[Citation needed]
I can’t find any data about penetrations, but IME it is very common for people not to have a convection oven.
Fryers have oil, right? Oh, this one doesn't. Air??? Air Fryer??
Not an oven. Not a fryer?
I don't own a fryer anyway, they are gross with all that oil.
This fryer uses no oil?????!!!!
My oven doesn't use oil either. But it's not a fryer!
And then it gets bought.
For me the USP is the slide in and out basket, ability to do a little shake. The convenience of that over a tray in the oven and the washing up and the turning and the burning one side of the items… is priceless
Even worse: a full sized oven that I already own.
What it's actually good for is cooking some things faster than a conventional oven, reheating fried foods.
I have had success making good homemade french fries with my air fryer, but I still thoroughly toss them in oil before cooking them. The end result is not really much healthier than if I deep fry them, but it is a lot easier and less messy.
I honestly didn't understand what they were at first and didn't bother to find out.
The real driver is the globally increasing number of single-person households tho
It’s the same thing with instant pot where they probably lose out a bit by not marketing themselves as a serious electric pressure cooker that can also do other stuff.
"to cook something in hot fat or oil; to be cooked in hot fat or oil"
Because of what the word means?
Normal sized boneless chicken breasts should cook in a pan in about 10 minutes or less, and you really don't need to do anything other than flip them once. If air fryers are convincing people to cook their own fresh food I would say that's a good thing, but I'm still struggling to see how they're actually better than "traditional" cooking.
By this logic it's particularly good at cooking food that otherwise would be better fried, but outside of that it does vegetables like brussel sprouts or small filets of fish particularly well leaving the inside soft and the outside cooked.
Dead simple. Super tasty. 10 minutes, easy cleanup.
Cube the tofu, cook for 75% of the total time, pull out and dress in liquid seasoning, return for the last bit and the outside gets crisp while the inside remains juicy!
Curious -- what do you use as a dressing?
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-fryer-to...
By comparison, the new breville I have does everything the old one did plus air frying, and the difference is distinct - I tried making fries in the convection baking mode on the old one and the result was noticeably worse than what I get from the new one in air fry mode. Noise and heat output approaches annoying levels with either air fryer, so I'm pretty confident the experience I get is close or the same as the purpose-build one. And the ability to space things out more gives better results, at least for my purposes. (I'll note that 95% of my air fryer use is for fries.)
You can also steam-slow-cook meat and get juicy tender chicken.
I suspect the plastics used were changed, or some preconditioning process was skipped to get more units out for a Black Friday sale or something. I haven't revisited the product category since.
Unfortunately those equipped with a stirring function come up as expensive. I would love to see a < $100 air fryer equipped with it.
And which model of stirring air fryer did you end up going for?
You can throw in frozen vegetables, meat and seasoning, turn the machine on, come back in 25 minutes and your food will be cooked uniformly to perfection. E.g., frozen brussels sprouts, chopped chicken sausages, a bit of olive oil and sambal sauce.
Prep time under 30 seconds.
Bonus points: Both fryers come with dishwasher-safe paddle and bowl. You can detach and wash the lid too of the De'Longhi one.
I'm not trying to be critical, but am genuinely curious as someone who's lived more than half the years since 1997 in Taiwan without hearing that term before.
I'd wager that having spent so long in Taiwan you've probably never heard the term because there it would just be "sauce" :P (or less tongue-in-cheek, it's just something that is implicitly and silently understood and recognized rather than having some kind of formal name).
Yeah, I’d tend to think in more specifically, in terms of which of those ingredients you listed are in it but all of those are familiar.
Though the phrase "White Man's Teriyaki sauce" is running around in my head and yes I get the irony of that.
But that is really not it's strong point indeed! It's not an alternative to a deep fryer (but that is primarily the way I see it used), it a faster oven.
Perhaps if you have a deep fryer with oil that is already at temperature. But if you have to heat the oil it's definitely not 3x faster than using an air fryer. Also, no need to clean up splatter afterward, or monitor hot oil while it's cooking. Or figure out what to do with several cups of oil after you've deep fried some french fries.
The device itself was more expensive than $200, obviously, but the "small oven" aspect of it saved us from having to run our regular-sized oven at all. I'd been wanting a small (not quite toaster-oven style) oven for a while, but without the counter space we could only justify it by sharing space with the microwave.
Not a literal lifesaver, but definitely a figurative one.
And if you've had frozen fried foods like mozz sticks, chicken nuggets or eggrolls in an air fryer, it really does live up to the name
If you get an air fryer that's the size of an oven it will be as hard to clean as an oven and will take just as long to heat and cook as an oven since internally the tech is 100% identical to a fan forced oven (a heating element with a fan). Don't make the mistake of bigger is better for an air fryer.
Air fryers are meant to be small pots that have a fan forced oven element bolted to the top that can easily be detached for washing in the sink. That's the whole appeal of it. It's a teeny tiny oven that heats up extremely quickly for little power due to its size. It's easy to clean because the non-electronic part fits entirely in the sink. It's only the size that gives air fryers an advantage. If you buy an air fryer the size of a fan forced oven you have literally just bought a less good fan forced oven.
Aka convection oven.
Which is a fancy marketing term for having a fan inside your oven
It's a small convection oven, which a lot (definitely not all) ovens come with standard today. I bought 2 of the cheapest whole kitchen "packages" from HD and both came with a convection setting. The electric even called it "Convection/Air Fryer."
A friend saw that setting and busted with excitement "Your oven has an air fryer!?" Yes my oven has an oven.
Really good marketing.
Never underestimate the power of the oven.
It makes tofu better than any other method and is a staple in our household.
My only wish is that the basket style models had more robust options. We go through one every ~6 months.
But temper your expectations. If you need your cooking implements to be squeaky clean, an air fryer will be a lot of work. If you're satisfied with your regular oven having a few bits of carbonized food bits here and there, then you'll also be satisfied with a "camp clean" level of air fryer cleanliness.
That might seem like a weird suggestion but remember the entire advantage of an air fryer is that it's a smaller form of an oven so it has less to heat and is thus faster for less power. Buying a big one makes it all pointless, just use the oven.
The small ones fit in a sink. Not much different than cleaning pots&pans.
It works by forcing air from the top to the food, not slowly from the back like regular oven. So you get better result if food isn't piled up over itself.
Airfryer doesn't get hot enough like pan over direct flame so food doesn't seem to get burned / stuck.
Some think it affects the air fryer cooking but I haven't noticed a difference.
It's also fantastic at reheating most things that aren't soup.
Haven't noticed that myself. Then again I mostly only cook pre-fried or that kind of stuff in my air fryer.
Wash and cut the potatoes into whatever's the appropriate size, put in the frying basket, pressure cook on high with the timer set to 2 mins (timer only starts once pressures built), release pressure, remove basket and drain + shake roughly.
Leave to sit for ~15 minutes on the counter while doing other shit, empty and dry the main vessel.
Bit of olive oil (or other fat) and seasoning onto the potatoes with shaking to make more surface area by fucking up the surface, pop it back in and air fry for 20-25m on 200*C, shaking halfway through.
End result? Absolutely perfect roast potatoes. Glassy crunchy outsides, fluffy insides, every time.
Also functions as a dehydrator and is super good enough to turn harvested mushrooms dry enough to powderise to make seasonings.
I cube tofu, cover in corn starch, throw in air fryer for 8 minutes. (chicken wings can be made the same in 20 minutes -- way better than anything from a restaurant)
when tofu is done, i add a little water, toss in some broccoli, close for 3 minutes, done
nuke pre-made rice and i have lunch in no time
i still use oven for longer-cook items like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and brussel sprouts, but only if I have a main cooking in the air fryer. but the oven gets used a lot less these days.
*Edit: 'are'
You can argue it's just a convection oven with a faster fan, but that doesn't make it a "meme".
They're also, like, very much not expensive at this point. It's a very commoditized, competitive market, and you can pick them up for <$50.
No fancy features, the design could clearly be improved, but chuck anything in this small chamber, crank up the timer and delicious food comes out 10mins later. I've gifted nice models to others, without feeling any need to upgrade my own. Maybe when it breaks.
I would suggest sticking with a small one though. Quicker to heat, better circulation etc
You did mention it yourself - "It gets a little dirty inside".
Compare it to the $30 air fryers that are essentially an insulated cooking pot with a detachable heating element. They do the same thing but are so trivial to clean since they are a cooking pot that fits in the sink.
It's one of those things in life where cheaper is better in my opinion and i do not recommend the above product at all.
https://www.ninjakitchen.com/exclusive-offer/DZ550WBKT/Ninja...
