More dual basket air fryer advice

I’m not sure I would recommend stacking burgers vertically, if your air fryer is the sort that has a fan over the heating element and the food below that.

Almost certainly there will be some radiant heat effect, and the tops of the burgers will be very much nearer the element and are likely to burn while the rest of the burgers will be cooking more slowly.

We have a Cosori single 5.5 litre basket, and it’s proved to be excellent for roast vegetables, salmon, and toasted teacakes.

In the two years we’ve owned the Cosori, we’ve used the main oven ten times and the air fryer over seven hundred.

Avoid Google like the plague, is my modus.

Good point

Same here. Hence wishing to replace it.

It's getting that way :(

Ditch the frozen burgers! You can be sure they’re made of all the bits you wouldn’t choose to eat if you knew. All you really need is some good mince (or better still, mince your own meat).

Tim

Could you split the patties, cook them, then reassemble into the buns?

We are only cooking the patties - buns are fresh.

You're missing my point. I'd expect you to only cook the patties, and I make no statement about the state of the buns.

All I'm suggesting is that splitting one or more of the patties might allow more efficient packing of the basket.

I'm not convinced. The heat seems to be pretty evenly distributed.

I usually stack bigger items house-of-cards style to start and give them a shake half way through.

Favourite of the moment: Lidl Cumberland plant based sausages, 10 minutes at

The *radiant* heat isn’t evenly distributed, it’s perhaps one reason why the manufacturers recommend using pre-heat, to avoid over-cooking parts of the food.

One of the YT channels I follow with deep tech dives found no difference with preheating when cooking in an air fryer. Admittedly a small test of fries.

We don't preheat and haven't noticed any issues.

Fairy nuff…and I’m using a sample of one. Other air fryers may be different.

I cook salmon, on a wire tray, at 140degC (after preheating) for 15 minutes, any more than that and the highest part of the salmon starts to brown, even though the heater isn’t on much (I can hear the relay click).

Hold the front page ...

The replacement fryer we ordered and has been delivered (we will experiment with 4/4L baskets) has a "preheat" function. 3 minutes at 160C.

So having purchased a 4/4L model, and used it last night:

- seems chips cooked 30% faster in the 4L basket than the 3L one previously.

- burgers were fine with some attention while cooking.

Interestingly this model - which seems to be a variant of our original one (from Lakeland) has a feature which keeps the fans on for about 2-3 minutes after cooking. The previous one didn't do this. I wonder if this is intended to prevent the electronics taking too much of a punishment, given the failure mode of the previous model.

Also I wonder if the prevalence of symmetrical dual basket devices is because of unsatisfactory variances in the heating performance of the asymmetric ones.

However to echo a PP, having this must have saved a fortune in electricity compared to using grill and oven previously.

Many of them circulate fresh air around the sides before blowing it past the heating element, so the outsides stay cool and they can get away with a plastic outer rather than a metal one. They likely need the fans to run on to ensure the internal heat doesn't transmit enough to melt the plastic outside.

They may also use that air to cool the electronics in the process, although perhaps the potential emitted VOCs from the electronics makes that air no longer food safe and it would have to be via a heatsink in the airflow and not the electronics themselves.

Theo

I'm not sure it's that. Ours cuts the fan as soon as the in-use side's door is opened and won't restart it until the door is tightly closed. If the door is opened to take out the food and then closed, but not pushed home, the fan does not restart. This will mean that the electronics won't be cooled and may lessen its life, but it does not melt the plastic outer, which would be an immediate effect.

Indeed they could not produce a design that is reliant on fan cooling to keep the casing intact after cooking, as many people may pull the plug as soon as the food is cooked.

You really think so?

A grill on for ten minutes at let's say 1.5Kw...compared with an air fryer on for 5...

so that is 5 minutes times 365 days times 1.5kWh/60

How much did the air fryer cost?

I saw an interesting article about solar panels in ?Norway where they have discovered that mounting them vertically gives a better output.

Apparently this stops them getting covered in snow (no s*it sherlock) but they get reflected light from the snow that is all around them.

You are making the mistake of assuming the *only* driver for the purchase was to save energy. However complexity suggests there may have been other reasons too. Ease of use for a less able person. Ability to site at a convenient height. Easier to clean. Colour to match the tiles.

The fact that we sourced a replacement rather than going "oh well, I guess it's back to the grill and oven combo" should have suggested there were multiple reasons.

Theo <theom+ snipped-for-privacy@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in news:ASw* snipped-for-privacy@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:

Risk to health from that may be lower than that of regular consumption of burger & chips.

No. You are making the mistake that I was commenting on the purchase. I was not, merely on the dubious logic that it 'saved a fortune'...