Air Fryer

[Jeff Gaines]

Air Fryers seem to be all the rage at the moment, I know it's not strictly DIY but I am thinking of getting one and it would be used by me to cook my own dinner :-)

I read through an article this morning that compared the food and the cost of cooking a meal using an oven and the same meal using an air fryer. It said the food tasted pretty much the same and there was a saving of 3p in costs. At least that's more than Bill saves on his cups of tea!

Anybody here use one and willing to comment on how good they are? I generally have a jacket potato and chop or chicken with vegetables (cooked in the microwave).

Many thanks.

[jon]

I use one to cook beefburgers or fish in batter, no point putting the oven on for just myself. I also have one of those Jamie Oliver radiant ovens in a glass bowl and I cooked a full Christmas dinner in that for four people.

[Alan J. Wylie]

I bought one from Asda for £34 a few weeks ago. I'm very happy with it. It does chips, heats up pies and pasties, I made a sweet potato curry last week and it roasted the chunks fine.

Only thing I'd point out, and this is an advantage, is that even from a cold start it seems to cook things in about 80% to 90% of the quoted time.

Highly recommended if you are only cooking for one or two.

For jacket potatos I give them about 20 mins in a microwave (10 mins full, 10 mins half) then another 20 mins in the air fryer, along with whatever I'm having with them.

[Jim Stewart ...]

we are on our second one you don't have to use that wee spoon for the oil in fact we don't use oil at all....

[The Natural Philosopher]

Since I have an oil aga permanently on to heat the house, cooking costs me nothing extra.

Frankly I think they are as much of a con as solar panels and heat pumps

[Rod Speed]

Jeff Gaines <jgaines [e-mail]> wrote

I love mine and use it for all except steaks/chops/curry etc.

Dont eat eggs much at all anymore for no particular reason.

Not convinced about that last bit. I now have a roast potato with most dinners whereas previously I mostly had them microwaved and even even had rice with steak quite a bit.

But he's a pathetic addict.

I love mine. Nothing like as reliable as a big wall oven or the best microwaves, but very convenient to use and I love the result food quality wise for the food I do in them.

I used to before the air fryers but now prefer a peeled potato dipped in olive oil and roasted in the air fryer.

I still have a jacket potato done in the microwave with chops, steak, sausages etc.

I eat lots of that, mostly in filo parcels or breadcrumbed with garlic inside or stuffed and with proscuitto or bacon parcels.

I still have those, always frozen.

[Rod Speed]

I get a better result with peeled potatoes when I dip them in olive oil.

[zall]

Even in summer ?

Even in summer ?

More fool you. Not everyone has an oil aga permanently on to heat the house,

[Brian]

We’ve had one for over a year.

They are more like a small fan oven than a fryer. You can cook anything from chips to baked items in them. They do good baked potatoes, better than in a uWave as you get a crispy skin. Being small, they are quicker (marginally) than a fan oven and so cheaper. We’ve done roast potatoes in ours. Not quite as good as the real thing but close. Chips are good. Things like chicken cook well. I tend to sous vide steak to I’ve not tried that.

Our main one - we bought a small one for the motorhome- has a decent sized ‘drawer’. The small one is a bit small but we were concern about power consumption on campsites- some have limited current available. I’d recommend a larger one.

[Joe]

A halogen oven, you mean? Also a great power/money saver, 1300/1400 watts rather than the many kilowatts of a typical oven.

OK, I'm impressed. The halogen oven is fine for most meals for two, but for four we normally use the halogen, the main oven and the microwave oven (repeatedly). And we warm plates in the top built-in oven, but without power, as there's enough heat from the main one.

[Roger Mills]

What happened to the first one?

[Andrew]

Do you also hate yoghurt (having never tried it) too ?.

[ajh]

About the same time here, it actually does all the cooking for two, roast chicken included.

I particularly like the fact that ours will toast 6 pieces simultaneously in 4.5 minutes.

Also because it heats up quickly it uses considerably less electricity than the fan oven, which is only used for bigger roast meals when all the family are here.

[Jim Stewart ...]

started making mechanical noises then the handle broke off tefal

[Jeff Gaines]

Many thanks for all the replies :-)

It looks as if it would do what I need. Whether or not it will save enough to pay for itself I don't know. It would save having to clean the blooming oven!

[Brian Gaff]

What about safety, ie how hot outside does it get, and cleaning, how mucky do they get? Brian

[Rod Speed]

Yeah, I just put the air fryer drawer in the dishwasher.

[Rod Speed]

Brian Gaff [e-mail] wrote

It doesnt get hot enough to matter.

Nothing special and I put the drawer in the dishwasher.

It comes apart into two pieces with a button releasing the inner from the outer.

[Clive Arthur]

There seems to be two types. The original(?) Tefal Actifry and the rest. The Actifry has a non-stick circular flat based bowl with a slowly rotating stirrer/tumbler which ensures the food gets evenly coated and cooked, whereas as far as I can see, the others just have a drawer with no tumbler.

The Actifry works very well and gives good results. However, it is bulky, and IME unreliable. I was given one and was impressed - when it broke down I bought a replacement hoping that I'd just been unlucky. Unfortunately, I was unlucky again, albeit with a different fault.

[Joe]

I don't have one, but I believe the halogen oven is easier to clean, as it is, well, just a big glass bowl. It also doesn't have to get any hotter than the thermostat is set to, as the fan is very powerful relative to the volume, whereas the sides of a conventional oven tend to need to be quite a bit hotter than the air temperature inside. So there's no burnt-on fat to clean off. Most of the cleaning of a halogen oven is mopping up the condensed water on the bottom of it, as that generally is quite cool. Yes, the glass does get fairly warm in use.

Actually, I wonder about the element really being a halogen lamp, as it gets spattered a bit over the long term, and the quartz of a QH lamp must be kept extremely clean to avoid spot overheating. A QH lamp is also more efficient than a standard incandescent, and in this application, the more heat and less light the better. I don't have the means of measuring the colour temperature.