Air Fryer Report

[Spike]

Five weeks ago we took the plunge and bought an air fryer, marked down from £119 to £92.

In that time we haven’t used our main oven at all.

Using the air fryer, in a normal week we cook three fish dishes in it (one with sweet potato chips), one batch of sweet potato chips, and one batch of roast potatoes (mixed ordinary and sweet). Three main meals are pan fried (curry, tagine, omelette) and one main meal is heated in a saucepan. The microwave is used for side dishes such as peas, runner beans, and rice.

The food cooked in the air fryer is delicious. And hot. And cooked quickly: roast potatoes the longest at 20 minutes, fries 11 minutes, frozen breaded fish 14 minutes (depends on thickness).

I’ve offered to cook Christmas Turkey with all the trimmings in it, but SWMBO likes her hotel dining that day.

Our March electricity consumption for the years 2011-2022 is 303 units. This March’s electricity consumption was the lowest ever at 229 units.

This is a saving of 74 units, or approximately £25.

In under four months the air fryer will have paid for itself.

[inri]

The forced air halogen cooker I have is also very good, I cooked a large turkey crown and vegetables for five people at Christmas.

[Brian]

We’ve had one for some time, plus a lower power one in the motorhome. I’ve not compared power consumption to a ‘real’ oven but I know it is far lower. I wanted to cook things with less oil etc mainly which they do really well and they are quicker than even a fan over - if smaller of course.

I’ve not tried a Turkey etc, we tend to have one which wouldn’t fit, but in theory a chicken should be fine. Air fryers are more like small fan ovens.

We like baked potatoes. I give them a few minutes in the uWave, then finish them in the airfryer to crisp the skin ( sometimes ‘hasselbacking’ them for a change).

Chicken drumsticks with various coatings are a frequent relaxed supper at weekends.

Roast potatoes if are quick as you say convenient if you are putting the oven on, we sometimes have them with cold cuts etc.

We bought a smaller one for use in the motorhome. The gas ovens in motorhomes generally struggle and on some sites, especially in Europe, you need to be careful of the load you place on the electrical hook up.

I’m surprised you cook fries for only 11 mins. Are they ‘thin’ fries? I cook wedges - much the same but with a few herbs etc on them - but I give them 12 mins, turn, 12 mins more.

[Joe]

Trimmings tend to need quite a range of temperatures.

We've had a halogen oven for over ten years, with broadly similar experiences.

But turkey? Our full-size built-in oven is only big enough to take the small-to-medium turkeys available. Turkey crowns, however...

[Rod Speed]

Spike [e-mail] wrote

I still use mine for pizza, because the wall main oven gets a lot hotter than any air fryer and that produces a much better pizza.

I don't do fish.

I only do roast potatoes and don't do sweet potatoes.

I still do potatoes in their jackets for some meals like steak, chops etc,

Me too.

Dont even know what that is.

Haven't done any eggs for more than a decade, not for any particular reason.

Never do any like that.

Me too.

I do mine for 30, peeled and dipped in olive oil.

Mine has likely gone up a little because I have a single roast potato with most meals instead of the previous mosly microwaved in their jackets.

I don't care about the cost, love the convenience and would replace my air fryer if it died, immediately.

[Rod Speed]

Yeah, I still do roast leg of lamb in mine because it won't fit in the air fryer.

I don't do turkey, I much prefer a roast leg of lamb and that is a family tradition.

[Rod Speed]

I always do, basically because there is a lot of cold cut meat on a roast leg of lamb even when I do a massive great open sandwitch with relish and lettuce every 4 days using the dome off the vertical loaf of fresh loaf of bread out of the bread machine every 4 days as the main meal.

I don't do lunch any day.

[Spike]

When I was doing the ‘burn in’ run, suggested by the manufacturer, at

160degC, our energy monitor indicated that it was running at 15s ‘on’ and 60s ‘off’, a duty cycle of 20%.

Yes, I should have been clearer, when I mentioned ‘Turkey with all the trimmings’, I was really talking about a suitable Turkey crown.

The ‘basket’ is 9” square and 3.5” deep, so a small one might fit.

Not tried hasselbacking yet, might save that experiment for a little later.

I’m looking forward to trying some tempura chicken, when the occasion arises.

Yes, same here.

Yes, the fries are thin, and easily overcooked in the air fryer. I’d imagine wedges cooking time would fall between fries and roast pots.

One slight disappointment is the number of presets this machine has, a total of 13 of which I’ve used two; ‘pre-heat’ and ‘keep warm’; I much prefer to set my own time/temp combination - which is quite straightforward, but some user-settable pre-sets would have been a useful feature.

[Brian]

Sounds similar to our ‘home ‘ one. It has several ‘clones’ - all ‘cubes’ with a drawer and a control panel above.

I recommend using a silicone sheet in the drawer - a few pounds off EBay. It makes cleaning easier.

Use two wooden spoons to limit the depth of cut. Place the potato between the handles.

I’ve not really used the presets. Ours has a row of them and can even be controlled by an App and Alexa but, other that trying it, the most I use that functionality for is monitoring if I leave the kitchen. Both of the twins have bought dual basket ones and I will probably replace ours with one when it dies.

I also recommend the Instant Pot. I used to be a fan of pressure cookers until we got the induction hob ( incompatibility problems- our pressure cooker, which we’d had years, was the wrong type of stainless). The Instant Pot is essentially an electric pressure cooker, although the better ones can do other things. Ours does Sous Vide which is a revelation. They can slow cook but I prefer a real slow cooker. The Instant Pot is either a bit over powered or I’ve not mastered the slow cook function.

A Turkey or chicken carcass always gets popped into the Instant Pot to make stock immediately after the meal. Being sealed, you can even leave it over night, then either make soup the next day ( in the IP ) or freeze for later use.

I’m a great fan of soup- thick of course, none of the thin southern stuff😀

[Brian]

I was disappointed to find when we bought a Turkey crown - the dreaded Covid Xmas- it didn’t include the giblets and neck. I use both to make the stock for the gravy. Fortunately, I had some chicken stock in the freezer so the day was saved.

That said, they are good value if people prefer white meat ( can we say that?). I remember at one time a chicken or Turkey leg was preferred by many but now people seem to avoid them- at least as part of a formal meal. Of course, carving a Crown is so much easier, you remove the whole breast without the hassle of breaking the leg joint, and then slice across it as the professionals do.

[Jeff Layman]

I've no doubt an air-fryer uses less electricity than a conventional/fan oven, but as it's more-or-less impossible to put a power monitor on an oven any comparison would be difficult (smart meter IHD with everything else switched off?). All I know is that after about 15 minutes to reach the preset temperature, the "element on" light for my oven (an AEG dual conventional + fan) continually goes on and off as the thermostat controls the oven temperature. I'm not even sure exactly what elements the thermostat controls - there is a bottom element and the top (grill) element is of split power (half or full? Even that isn't clear from the manual*).

• AEG are rather uninformative when it comes to power consumption. The label on the oven states that the maximum is 5.1kW - I assume that's both ovens on full. The manual (actually manuals - one doesn't have any power info at all!) states under "energy efficiency" (Product Fiche and information according to EU 65-66/2014): Energy consumption with a standard load, conventional mode: Main oven: 0.94 Top oven: 0.78 kWh/cycle

Energy consumption with a standard load, fan-forced mode: Top oven: not applicable Main oven: 0.86

[Jeff Gaines]

I have a Salter air fryer with two drawers. It has metal grids at the bottom which are kept about 5 mm off the base. I asked Salter and they said don't use silicone sheets as it will interfere with the airflow.

Must admit I wouldn't mind using them as cleaning the grids is a pig.

[Jeff Gaines]

Red meat matters!

[Jim gm4dhj ...]

they don't last for ever our tefal mechanicals packed in a fter a few tears but we just bought another one at £150

[Jim gm4dhj ...]

brian...cooking is wumins work

[SteveW]

Clamp meter on the live core of the cable feeding the oven, easily done by pulling the cooker switch a little out of the pattress/back box.

[Rod Speed]

No its not, the best of them do show total kwh.

[Spike]

I used a clamp sensor that wirelessly connects to the display unit (it’s a BG Minim), and it’s straightforward to tell what’s going on. Back in the days when we did oven cooking, it was easy to see the meter bang over to

5kW every now and then.

[Spike]

I found this too. I’d bought some single-use parchment papers, which had been fluted so they had sides, but found stuff cooked more slowly as the airflow was interrupted. Food was not as crispy; I now fold them flat and use them that way.

Our air fryer has a basket, that sits in a basket carrier, the whole unit sliding into the bottom half of the AF. The combination is held together with a catch on the handle of the basket and very easily separated to load or empty the basket. Both are dishwasher safe so very easy to clean.

[Spike]

Should have added that the clamp is on one of the meter tails in the meter cupboard, so monitors total power. ATM it’s ticking over at 0.1kW, consumption since midnight (including cooking breakfast) is 1.7kWh.