Is 500w for an oven enough to cook burgers?

For comparison I purchased a air fryer with a 4 litre basket. It cooks two 1/4lb frozen burgers in 15/20 minutes @ 185C. It has a 1350W heating element. With the burgers on a metal rack the heating element is approx 3.5 inches away from the top of the burgers AND the air fryer is like a fanned oven forcing the hot air around the burgers. They still have to be turned over once.

My guess 500W is somewhat underpowered but it probably will cook your burgers in time. Do you cook yours from frozen?

This is the model I have and it was a lot less than £50 direct from the Tower web site BUT I think I got it as end of line price as they now have similar but different models listed.

Since buying it just after last Xmas I've used it a lot, and for fried food, the fying pan a lot less. I tend to line the basket with aluminium foil and use a metal rack or place the food in a silicone reusable liner (the ones with strengthening ribs are a LOT better smoother floppy ones - the ribbed ones can be turned inside out to give a smooth bowl.).

Note items listed below fit my air fryer which has a small 4 litre basket.

Rack

Isn't the secret of air fryers that they heat up much less air to do the job. Hence the savings and speed ?

I was amused to hear the "Sliced Bread" breakdown on the BBC noting that all the savings start to disappear when you have a large family and end up doing multiple batches ...

With just me and SWMBO it's perfect though -

II also think they are over hyped. They are great for some things but a whole chicken is usually shown in adverts. These are a simple heating element located just above the top of the basket with air blown over it into a fairly small space. With a whole chicken what's more likely to happen is the bit a fraction of an inch away from the heating element is going to get rather burnt. It works well with chicken pieces or anything that can placed in an even layer on a rack and so cooks uniformly. Oven chips seem to cook a lot better but the chips from the chip shop a three minute walk from my house taste better :) One benefit is they drain a lot of fat away from meat and processed food when using a shallow rack. I found a third party open rack a lot better that the drain plate with a few holes that my air fryer came with

I agree that the best use is for meals, or part meals, for one of two people but in this household not everything goes in it. Fresh or frozen vegetables are still boiled in a pan. Physically high items still go in the oven. For some items it doesn't replace the microwave. However, I do have one of the smaller models with a single basket

oops, it may help if there was a link to the model

Mmm. I have been considering one, and that is about the limit of what I would want to pay...

It seems that ultimately, stripped of hype, they are a small fan blown oven, with a thermostat and a timer

Bigclive takes a cheap Asda one apart

These devices (George Foreman grill or equivalent) are in the 1200 watt to 1500 watt range. The heat is in closer contact to the meat, if you close the lid, and especially if the unit heats from both sides.

A burger is bacteria, through and through, versus a cut of meat which is bacteria on the outside (mostly) and so searing the outside helps. But a burger, the core of it must be cooked to the "approved" temperature, for safety.

And cooking safety is not a joke. All it takes is one serious incident, to destroy your digestive system and you spend the rest of your life dealing with the consequences. You DO NOT want to take shortcuts on killing bacteria in ground beef.

The "slow cooker pot" cooking device, a recipe for stew prepared in such a pot, may call for the meat to be prepared separately. The meat step ensures the meat is cooked to the bacteria temperature, then the raw veg and cooked meat, are thrown into the slow cooker. Maybe another six to eight hours pass, before serving. The broth gets hot enough to cook the veg (the carrots are not firm, all the other veg are similarly soft), and since you prepped the meat separately, you know it was cooked to the safe temperature before being thrown into the pot (stewing beef).

"This will change depending on its capacity, a small 2 to 4-quart crock pot will mostly be in the 100 to 200-watt range, while a 6 to 8-quart will be in the 200 to 400-watt range for most family uses, and a 10-quart crock pot will use over 450 watts"

Cooking calls for an attention span. You don't want cooking to take so long, you zone out, or take "shortcuts". The heating device should "cook with authority". Even for experienced chefs, the slow cooker will try their patience (taking lid off, poking veg to check for cooking state). Normally, males don't have the attention span for "budget" cooking devices.

The thermostatic control on the devices, the duty cycle of the heating when up to temperature, those determine the power consumption of the device. It does not draw 1500 watt for the entire cook period. Once the measured temperature reaches the target, the average power consumption might drop to 500 watt as it cycles on for a minute, off for two minutes.

A 3000 watt cooking device, it may represent a large device with large thermal losses, but it is unlikely to be drawing 3000 watts for the entire cook session. A smaller device, may preheat easier. But you don't want a cook device to be so small, that it "distorts" the cooking phases. Bringing the thing up to temp. Searing the outside. Cooking fast enough so the food item isn't desiccated and as hard as rock.

Paul

Just noting that my little George Foreman grill is labelled 650 W - 740 W.

So you pays yer money.....

Cheers

Dave R

That Air Fryer, at £20, ticks all of the boxes compared with the other devices being discussed.

Incidentally, having three of those cheap ASDA Air Fryers (Don't Ask!!!) I was hoping for a tear-down. Instead it was just about all Big Clive's ugly mug.

V. Disappointing ;-}}

Air fryers are great for a couple of baked potatoes. Which also look a bit lonely in a conventional oven.

I don't understand that. The crispy skin you get from oven roasting is tasty and enjoyable. The skin on a microwaved potato might be edible, but it's far less enjoyable.

I have a combination microwave/oven/grill. For baked potatoes I use a combination of low microwave power and high temperature oven. Inside cooks faster and skins crisps up.

I agree that a baked potatoes should have crisp skin and I eat both the insides and crispy skin.

This time of year I prefer boiled "baby" potatoes or if I see them the waxy type of "salad" potatoes. Early in the season I purchased a bag of Jersey Royals that actually tasted like I remember. A week later in the same store an identically packed bag of the same - completely tasteless :(

Except the skins are not nice and thick like they are in an oven

Yup. Same here

In message <105gak0$2p9pt$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, at 15:37:51 on Sat, 19 Jul

I find that they only work well in a microwave if you par-boil them first. And they still take as long as in an air fryer. The latter have their skins on too.

ps. Potatoes done in the oven without skins are called "Roast potatoes".

Hmm. My family ran a fruit and veg. market stall in St. Albans. Imported goods were obtained from local suppliers.

The first early season potatoes came from places like Egypt! Jersey Royals came in small wooden crates, packed in soil. Transport cost/disease control concerns may have impacted on this and the bagged versions did not have the expected flavour.

I grow early/salad potatoes for our own use. Browsing the catalogues, I came across a variety claimed to be comparable to the JR. Caledonian Pearl. OK but not quite the flavour. Probably due to soil differences.

More likely the distinctive flavour came from the traditional way of fertilising the soil - collecting seaweed from the foreshore.

Probably this practice has died out. The Jersey Royal potato is the same variety as grown elsewhere but it used to have a distinctive flavour when grown on Jersey.

It's much like some of the standard varieties of fruit grown worldwide and imported into the UK to give us a year round supply. Some of it has been engineered to appear perfect on the supermarket shelf but is devoid of flavour but often the same variety of,say, apple is like chalk and cheese depending on which country it comes from.

and here too..

Makes it entirly pointless reading the label description.