Another called it “a total gamechanger when it comes to cooking”, while Gordon Ramsay claimed the results are like food “cooked in oil, but [the air fryer] locks in the juice and the flavour is extraordinary”.
Professional chefs have been utilizing convection cooking—fine, air frying—to quickly cook everything from potatoes to roasted veggies and more for decades.
Despite this, professional chefs and culinary experts alike seem to hate the thing. You don't have to look far to find examples, either: Pretty much every YouTube cooking video involving a chef and an air fryer is riddled with disdain. "It's just a convection oven," they whinge.
The downside
Air-frying also produces high temperatures at a very rapid rate, thus making it extremely easy to burn food. And charred food may be carcinogenic. In addition, Cucuzza adds, because most devices cook 1 to 3 pounds of food at a time, it can be challenging to air-fry meals for a large family.
As the cost of living crisis has skyrocketed air fryers have taken the world by storm because they use less energy and cook things so quickly. Residents have been going crazy buying them in a bid to prevent using their ovens and save money.
At their core, air fryers are essentially smaller-sized convection ovens. For this reason, commercial businesses don't benefit from them. Convection ovens may find uses in the food industry for certain items but have many limitations for broader service menus.
According to their appliance expert, Samantha Cooper, “[air fryers] are loud … don't do anything significantly better than an oven … and they also require bumping your toaster and coffeemaker onto a storage shelf.”
Are Air-Fried Foods Better for You? By most measures, air frying is healthier than frying in oil. It cuts calories by 70% to 80% and has a lot less fat. This cooking method might also cut down on some of the other harmful effects of oil frying.
Overall, air fryers are a healthier alternative to deep fat frying, but food cooked in an air fryer is still classed as a fried food.
Experts praise air fryers for their versatility, energy-savings and the 'endless recipes' which are possible. Chefs and recipe developers weigh have also given kudos to their cleanliness, while some have admitted that they prefer a traditional oven for a 'full result'.
The pros are that air fryers are versatile, easy-to-use, and very quick allowing you to make healthier food efficiently in your own kitchen. Despite this, these rather large devices quickly take up space on your kitchen counter or in your cupboards and can be tricky to clean.
2017 was the first year air fryers made a dent in the US market – and their success was compounded during the pandemic. It's not difficult to see why the air fryer trend became so popular – they are quicker, use less fat to fry and so have a health benefit, and use less energy to operate.
Easy cleanup: The cooking component of many models is dishwasher safe, so cleanup is simple. Smell: An air fryer does not fill up your house with the smell of the food that you are preparing.
With nine cooking methods, the Ninja Foodi is an air fryer, pressure cooker, broiler, dehydrator, slow cooker and steamer all in one.
You can limit the amount of acrylamide in air-fried food by cooking it for the shortest amount of time and at the lowest temperature necessary to achieve perfect results. French fries should be cooked until golden-brown, and meat should be cooked to a safe internal temperature.
Better quality models can last up to 5 years, depending on their use. Therefore, you should know the factors that might impact your air fryer's life. With this information, you can avoid buying the wrong one and wasting money on it.
Air fryers are small appliances that consume much less energy than full-sized ovens. For example, a Ninja Air Fryer uses 1,550 watts, while a NuWave Brio 6-Quart Air Fryer uses 1,500 watts. By contrast, a full-size oven uses between 2,500 and 5,000 watts.
So if you often eat deep-fried foods, switching to an air fryer could be helpful. If you're cooking a food that you wouldn't normally add fat to when you cook it, whether that's ready-made oven chips, bacon, sausages or breaded chicken, being cooked in an air fryer is unlikely to make it healthier.
It is a slick appliance and it makes the food healthier than deep frying it. One should keep in mind the amount of usage, health, safety, and financial aspects before buying an air fryer. But if you don't like to have such foods more often, then you can skip buying it.
If you love pizza as much as we do, you'll be excited to know that you can bake pizza in the air fryer, and it's actually even better than baking it in the oven! Pizza night is definitely the best night of the week! It's my go-to simple meal to satisfy both kids and grown-ups.
Hestia appliances the 4-liter air fryer is also popular in India because it allows grilling, roasting, baking, and reheating your food while using 95 percent less oil.