"Air Fryers"

It's like renewable energy. First you buy your wind turbine, then you buy your gas turbine backup, then you but the battery stabiliser and then you buy a massively long DC line to connect it to everything else....

Generally, a fan oven passes heated air around the oven and the food is on a tray or in a dish. An air fryer dispenses with the tray and the hot air impinges directly on the food.

That's my understanding anyway. I don't have a modern one, but used to have a Tefal air fryer which slowly churned/tumbled the food in a large pan. It worked very well indeed while it lasted, but was pretty unreliable.

It's like only half filling the kettle to save electricity. When you add up the cost, it amounts to peanuts.

To keep my Aga hot 24x7 is around 600W. In electricity equivalent oil consumption.

So to heat an oven for a couple of hours is whatever it takes to warm the structure and air up. And the food up, then keep it hot while it cooks.

At most a couple of kWh for a big meal.

Which you can deduct from the central heating bill.

So what - 50p to cook Christmas dinner?

A saving of 25p!

This makes no sense. If the food is in a tray or dish in a fan oven, why wouldn't the hot air "impinge directly" on it?

If you dispense with the tray, what is the food sitting on?

Okay, well on my air fryer there are 6 programs. 3 of those are "bake", "air-fry" and "roast" which I can't help but suspect are all the same thing! I reckon it's just the latest fad which will fizzle out once people catch on they've been conned.

Yup.

It's more EcoBollox™

Just a fancy name for a small fan oven sold on green credentials.

AIUI, there's a basket with holes in the bottom, so the food gets air nearly all the way round, unlike a tray or dish in a conventional fan oven.

The Tefal one I had used a circular bowl with a slowly revolving paddle/scoop which tumbled the food to ensure even cooking. A good idea and very effective while it worked, but over-complicated and unreliable IME.

I am living on my own so firing up a mini-oven is more economical than firing up the main oven so I should be saving something, not sure it's measurable!

Perhaps you missed the bit about it taking half the time, which is the main bonus for me.

How do you get a whole turkey in an air fryer?

... and presumably they didn't cook everything at the same time so how did they keep things warm that had been cooked earlier? On the other hand if everything fitted in the air fryer (even a two drawer one) it must have been a pretty small family and/or a rather frugal meal.

We have an air fryer and use it quite a lot but for main meal roasts the normal fan oven makes much more sense.

Apart from the fact that the air fryer does not need any support infrastructure, I am not funding it from public money and it actually works, exactly the same.

The programme is still available to watch:

A perforated platform at the bottom of the drawer, although I use a perforated baking paper liner on that to make cleaning even easier. Unlike a baking tray, where the air has to heat the tray to heat the food, the hot air comes up through the perforations, directly onto the food.

I vary the cooking times, rather than the temperature. It is quite simple to open the drawer early to see whether the food is done, but finding a different temperature would require a lot more experimentation.

That simply defies the laws of physics. I can have a baked potato using the microwave and the aga in under 15 minutes. Adding more surface heat will simply leave the outside burnt and the inside raw.

Did you notice how hardly anyone had one before the “fake flu” epidemic? Coincidence? I think not!

Tim

I also have one of those 'Jamie Oliver' glass halogen fan ovens. I cooked a complete Christmas dinner in it for five people few years ago. I'm on my own now so don't use it much.

I have a baking tray with holes in it.

Works fine in a fan oven.

Owain

It would be handy if they provided some sort of equivalence table in chart form so you can look up temp A and time A and read off what the equivalent cooking time will be for temp B and time B (assuming it's do-able at all).