AirFryers
These appliances seem very popular at the moment. We don't have one, although both our son's have them. Are we missing out? Most of our food is cooked in either the oven or microwave, very little, other than veggies, are cooked on the hob, although we did have a stir fry tonight which was obviously cooked on the hob. So what are the advantages? I know they are not massively expensive but if we buy one and don't use it we still need to find space for it. So sell me an Air Fryer or not as the case may be?
David
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@DavidKlyne We have one which we use often, especially when away in the caravan. Items which OH would normally do in the oven at home, pieces of chicken, chips, scallops or roast potatoes, cakes, heating up pies take much less time, and so energy. In fact tonight we has an apple crumble cooked in it. There are lots of recipes on FB which might be worth looking at before deciding if one would be of value to you.
Added bonuses are that they are very easy to clean using a silicon liner, and use little or no fat for cooking so a healthy option.
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David, think of an Air Fryer as a very small fan oven. We generally cook for just the two of us. Instead of using the oven I use the Remoska as it is very low wattage. If I want something crispy though I use the air frier, so chips, flaky pastry, breaded chicken etc spring to mind. Ours is a single drawer 3.8/4.2L Tefal cheapo. If cooking for more than two then it's the oven.
Colin
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We have a Ninja Smart cook double drawer air fryer. It has 2 separated drawers of equal size and can do normal air frying like a fan oven, roasts, baking, rehydrating. We don't use it for everything but if you oven cook something then generally speaking you can air fry it. You save time warming the oven, say 2 minutes air fryer, 10 minutes for our big oven. Rule of thumb is that you generally save anywhere between 15-20% of cooking time at a reduced heat so it's economical. I cooked 2 Salmon Fillets the other day for 10 minutes with a dressing on top. Would have been 5 minutes warming the small electric oven and 15-18 minutes for the Salmon.
You can find various set ups, for example just 1 large drawer or 1 large one and one small or 2 drawers which can be combined into 1 large one. Ours as stated is a 2 separate drawer system. I don't use it everything as I still like to cook from scratch on the hob but our electric ovens need replacing and the air fryer postpones that for the moment.
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We are air fryer converts. We bought one this time last year, a Ninja dual drawer model, and find it very easy to cook the kind of food we enjoy. We like basic foods that are taken to another level and to our taste by adding things like herbs and spices, but using very little in the way of fats, so much healthier. I can do a meal for two in 20 minutes, sometimes using up to five, six, seven different vegetables, tasty fresh fish, different kinds of potatoes, I have even air fried filled Gnocchi, to add to a roasted veg mix. The term “air fryer” is a tad misleading I think, it’s more like dry roasting. Homemade, air fried chips are utterly delicious, and we often mix potatoes with sweet potato chips, butternut squash chips, celeriac chips, all seasoned, for extra veg. The best place to get ideas on how to be innovative with food nowadays is to look on Pinterest, and there are some brilliant ideas for air fryers. Easy to use, more economic to use than a main oven, brilliant if you want to be more creative with fresh rather than more processed foods. So healthier.
If you do go for one, it’s hard to beat the Ninja range. Get some silicon liners that fit the drawers well, and some paper liners as well. We use these in our smaller single drawer model in MH, saves on the washing up!
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I've just bought our second one - a Tefal 11 litre, dual drawer one which had £80 knocked off in the Amazon Black Friday sale. The first was a bit small and only tended to get used for chips and fillets of salmon etc. My first test was cooking a whole chicken - which is usually Ros's domain - and always seemed like a lot of messing about. In the air fryer, it was so simple and only took 50 minutes and I also did roast potatoes, sweet potatoes and parsnips. A useful feature I like is the 'sync' facility where you can set each of the drawers to finish at the same time.
I think what appeals to me is that, although I know you can program an oven in terms of temperature and time - I've never got my head round it whereas with the air fryer it's so simple and precise - a bit like using a microwave.
The only slight downside is that it's a bit big on the worktop but we're fortunate in that when we created the new kitchen, I made sure there was plenty of workspace available.
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Ours a bit different in that it has a lid rather than drawers. It’s made by Ninja and has heating elements both below a griddle pan at the base and in the fan housing in the lid. A metal basket sits on the griddle pan for use in air fryer mode. Other functions include grill and roast, which use both the upper and lower elements to varying degrees. Using grill with lid closed sausages take 12 to 14 minutes and have nice scorched stripes, as do chops / chicken legs / breast. The roast function can use a probe to monitor temperature / turn off cooking and is great for small joints of meat. The only down side is the lack of height compared to the drawer type. I have cooked a whole chicken using oven function and probe, but it had to be spatchcocked to fit. We actually went for it because it will fit two whole trout into the air fryer basket, which can be easily lifted out to aid dishing up. They cook in 4 minutes at 200C. Since we bought it we rarely use the oven.
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Neighbours on a campsite that we were staying at last year demonstrated their airfryer to us. My wife, previously very sceptical about airfryers was impressed and we bought one soon after returning home. We specifically bought the smallest Ninja on the market because it doesn't take up much space in the caravan (it's not much bigger than a toaster). However, we use it at home now just as much as we do during our travels, especially for preparing hot small snacks.
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I have to say I am still not convinced. We have a full sized oven at home and a small one. I mostly use the small one for meals eg pasta bakes, stuffed peppers etc. and the large one for bread making. we don’t eat fish or chips, very rarely roast meat, in fact don’t eat a lot of meat at all. We have a Remoska in the van which only uses 400 w. I can use that for most oven type meals and bake bread and cakes in it.
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Thanks everyone for your input re Air Fryers. I think Margaret is not yet persuaded but we are still thinking about it and your comments have been useful.
Thanks
David
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We don’t eat any meat apart from fish as well. But I love our AF for roasting veg, and super quick to do other things. I must learn how to bake bread and cakes in it. Great for small batch cooking. We toyed with buying a Remoska for MH, but opted for a small AF. Haven’t regretted buying both AFs. We got dual drawer Ninja for £150, and little MH one drawer at a snip from Aldi. The difference for us is watching Smart meter deal with cooking in both, as AF is a lot quicker for most things. I do like to use our small tall oven with its three shelves for some stuff though.
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We also rarely use our smaller home oven unless we have guests or would need more space than the air fryer can provide. We have a big oven and a half size one at home and for the 2 of us we never need the big oven so it is only used if we are baking a large number of cakes or scones.
We have had a dual drawer air fryer for about 3 years now, then we bought a very inexpensive Lidl one for the caravan, it is a single larger drawer, mainly for DD and family to use. It is very good as there is plenty of space in it, so it too now resides in our kitchen when not needed in the caravan.
We have a reasonable amount of worktop, but several large appliances to accommodate, so we added some large drawer units where we used to have a sofa, and they are excellent for storing the mixer, the ice cream maker, and all manner of bulky things, so now we only have the airfryers, the bread maker, the microwave and the coffee machine sitting out. They all fit neatly in various corners and leave us the space we need day to day.
The extra worktop over the new units is mainly used for the fruit bowls and odds and ends, but does tend to become a “dumping ground” for mail and shopping waiting to be put away. Every so often OH decides it is “too much” and falls out on it. I then get a pile deemed to be my stuff which I have to remove!
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We don’t have an Air Fryer and I can’t justify buying one. Much as I am tempted by peer pressure - FOMO.
We have ancient sold fuel Aga that is always on - so no waiting for it to heat up. It cooks everything we need either during the day or slowly overnight. It heats the water and a large draughty sitting room. The rest of the kitchen stuff is in a large draughty pantry. It was put in when my husband was one. Seventy six years ago.
I’m not against helpful machines - having a large room means there’s plenty of space for Bread Machine (used every night), Kenwood Mixer, Magimix Processor and Coffee Grinder.
But I’m the odd one out in the family.0 -
Not quite sure I see any disadvatage to living near a Lakeland store? Sadly the one in MK has closed down although of course we do have a large John Lewis which covers most bases. I also think that the likes of Dunelm and The Range have moved ito their market. Lakeland were quite an innovative retailer often bringing must have kitchen products to the market that none of us realised we needed!!! Before they had lots of branches the Windermere store was always a must visit place if in the Lake District.
In my working life I was involved in Kitchenware and Small Electricals, albeit now about 25 years ago. The sales of pressure cookers were quite small by the time I left, I think many are frightened of them! I suspect it was mostly a replcement market rather than lots of new buyers? Mind you why you would replace one I am not sure as spares were usually readily available so unless you dropped it you were unlikely to damage them.
David
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I literally wore our old pressure cooker out🤭 we used to take it away in our first caravan, used it extensively at home. We had three years of not buying bread as well at one point, have taken bread maker on holiday as well, it lived in the awning with a lead through the van window, folks used to walk past sniffing 🤣 It came out again during COVID, I got stocked up with yeast and flour. We aren’t microwave fans. Had one for a couple of years, but we never really bothered with it, and it was never replaced. I think some of the changes for us are down to getting older, far too easy to put weight on with homemade bread, homemade ice cream. Occasionally we use our 42 year old slow cooker, that was a wedding present. I haven’t had the opportunity to do a big family Xmas meal for nearly a decade now, it’s been just me and OH for last four Xmases as well. We vary our Xmas dinner. I usually cook for my sister as well and take something up for her on Xmas Day. I have had two opportunities to try Aga cooking, both holiday cottages, loved them. We have a dual fuel range type at home.
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Silicon liners have been mentioned, which obviously make cleaning easier. But the science around air flow says they alter the way the frier works and decrease the cooking efficiency. By how much I have not got a clue and I usually resort to using a small foil container when re-heating sausage rolls.
They are require air circulation to get heat under and around the food. The rack they come with has been designed for this purpose and allows this passage of hot air. Philips who I believe own the original patent, have a "Rapid Air Technology" set up that is the result of a shaped base to the units. This looks a little like a squashed fan blade and produces a vortex effect for air beneath the food rack to be forced up to maximise cooking efficiency.
Colin
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I cook most stuff directly in the compartment, but fish, particularly tuna, “bleeds” so I use silicon liners for fish. Would use the paper liners in MH. Drawers and crisping trays go into dishwasher for cleaning, I don’t handwash anything if I can help it🤭
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Oh - how I miss our Aga @Goldie146. When we had the barn conversion done - getting on for 30 years ago now - I said, "what this place needs is an Aga!" - so we had one installed just before we moved in - and the builders made a tiled enclosure for it - complete with 'Aga shelf'! Complete opposite from high tech air-fryers, microwaves, fan ovens and the like. Just bung things in until they are done! Top oven for roasts and the bottom one for slow cooking - and it cooked things like nothing else on earth. We still have what we call our "Aga breakfast" on a Sunday morning - but it's not the same.
Don't know whether I would like to run a gas one at today's prices, though🤔
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We got a Ninja 9 in one air fryer a few year ago when we were having the kitchen re-done and therefore had no cooking facilities or a week or so and we've never looked back. Far quicker and more efficient. Mrs C stocked up on a few air fryer cookbooks and now only use the main ovens when there are more than the two of us. We have a smaller version for the caravan which means the gas oven is never used.
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We have an air fryer at home and rarely use the ovens now. They will be cooking the Christmas dinner for everyone though. I find it so useful. Even better is the one we bought for the static caravan, the oven there is hit and miss and the gas canisters on site are expensive, we never use the oven there now. But by far my best kitchen appliance is my slow cooker, I wouldn’t be without it. Big rice puddings that last us a few days, steamed treacle pudding, casseroles, soups, chicken in sauces and so much more, it’s on almost every day.
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@DEBSC 🤩could you share how you do a slow cooker rice pudding please? Mine is very old, it was a wedding present over 40 years ago, but has two settings, low and high. A crock pot inside the heating base…….
Start a new recipes thread if you want, won’t clog this up for DKthen😁
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We have an appalling record on new gadgets and gizmos, most of which are now in the attic....bread maker, coffee maker, coffee grinder, sandwich toaster.....
Even our first dish washer, inherited when we moved house 7 years ago, has only been used twice.
I can see that many find air fryers very useful, but I reckon we'll stick to what we know.
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@Takethedogalong thats weird, it won’t let me start a new discussion. Anyway, a friend asked me for the recipe recently but I don’t have one, I do it by eye, just chucking it in. Rinse the pudding rice then put in slow cooker, add milk + I then like to add some evaporated milk, nutmeg and some sugar, then I cook on low for about 3 hours but I check it a few times cos it does need stirring. I do enough for about 3 days to be heated up in the dish in the microwave.
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@TimboC there are many electrical appliances I would give up but the dishwaher wouldn't be on that list, greatest invention ever made😊
David
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No David, I'd go with circular saw, cordless drill, router [woodwork or internet] biscuit jointer, belt sander. You may be able to detect I like my woodwork.
Colin
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Colin
sadly, whilst I appreciate the usefulness of the tools you mention, I think I would currently have difficulty using any of them at the moment but I can still load and unload a dishwasher. Also I expect the tools you mention give you a lot more enjoyment than washing dishes, which is perfectly understandable.
David
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@DEBSC many thanks.
I’d rather be without my car than the dishwasher😱 Utterly loathe washing pots. All our kitchen gadgets tend to get used, some more than others admittedly. Coffee maker is semi retired, but only because we both cannot drink coffee like we used to do, tends to be too strong for us beyond a single cup a day. Ice cream maker had to be retired for the sake of our cholesterol levels, special occasions only now. Same with bread maker. Home made food is just too delicious! Microwave never caught on with us, beyond speeding up jacket potatoes. Only had one a couple of years, never replaced it. I do have some nifty non electrical gadgets…
Top gadget recently? My mini chainsaw, brilliant in garden. Not much use in kitchen though🤭
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@TimboC They have them on site, used to be at various points now all in one place, large bin things where you put your rubbish. We have smaller versions at home inside and out.
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I’m only guessing here, but I think @KjellNN might mean a proper Insinkerator. A device installed into a sink that grinds up waste food into a slurry that can then be flushed into the sewage system and dealt with via the treatment plant. They are common in USA and other places overseas. All we get usually in UK is a box to put your scrapping into, that is collected. Only available in certain areas. I’d love to keep my own pig as a waste food disposal unit, however a chocolate Labrador isn’t a bad substitute🤭
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