Yeah that’s what I said before I got one too.
Air fryers are the shit.
Agreed, it’s the best thing I ever bought.
We have a Ninja hybrid type. That thing is AMAZING almost equal to the value of a microwave
Also got a Ninja one, but we got the thing with dual baskets so you can optionally cook two foods at different temps. Really makes getting those tendies and fries much easier.
Same. Picked it up on Black Friday.
The fries are so much better than from the oven, and nuggets came out super crispy on the outside.Looking forward to testing more stuff.
I got some $15 one from bestbuy 8 months back I think and it gets used almost every day. I haven’t turned on the oven in so long I wonder if it even works…
Biggest disadvantage is that you have another bulky piece of equipment taking up counter space. Best option is to get a convection oven with an air fryer setting. It’s even more convenient because it doesn’t take up additional space and you don’t have to move it in/out of storage. It’s always there ready for immediate use.
Not everyone has a convection oven. They are portable convection ovens, not portable ovens.
I have a toaster oven because I don’t need to heat my entire oven and use much more energy and time to heat the entire thing to reheat a slice of pizza.
I use the convection function when I’m working with large amounts but for 1-2 people, the air fryer is much faster.
In my experience they work better than convection ovens. Air fryers can move much more air over the food.
Air fryers are convection ovens.
Fundamentally, yes.
Practically, things labeled “air fryer” make different tradeoffs than things labeled “convection ovens”.
In particular, air fryers have comparatively big fans, and vent way, way more air out the back to keep humidity down, so they make food much crispier than a convection oven does.
Yeah, I keep trying to use my convection toaster oven as an air fryer and it doesn’t work out and then I’m like “SEE?! AIR FRYERS ARE STUPID.” But really I’ve never tried one.
Small, very concentrated convection ovens. I have both a medium sized convection oven and an air fryer. They do different things well.
I can bake stuff in my convection oven but would never try to get a crisp fried chicken from it.
I should try this. We recently moved, and now have a gas stove, the over heats up INSANELY fast and I swear food cooks faster in it even with the fan off (Is there some humidity factor?).
This was so uncanny I did some direct comparisons with the oven in our old house (Went back to clean it up for a weekend). And it actually cooks things faster, after preheat. Literally no idea why.
It’s probably just a higher end appliance. After growing up with my family only ever getting used ovens and replacing with more used ovens when they broke, I finally tried a more expensive new unit and it was an induction stovetop with convection oven and it’s unreal how different it is. I still use the air fryer pot lid for various things though.
Gas (UK) delivers heat much faster than electric does. This is part of our problem in changing over from “conventional” fuels to electric, and the reason why I remember my mother’s gas eye level grill so fondly. Cheese on toast under a gas grill was so much better than you can ever do under an electric one. Recent fan ovens help, but you’re still limited to the amount of KW compared with the insane calorific value of fossil fuels per unit of volume.
Air fryers are convection ovens that circulate air much faster, resulting in a larger transfer of heat.
My convection oven actually has an air fryer setting and it basically turns up the fan to 11.
But convection ovens aren’t necessarily air fryers. To be fair though some air fryers I wouldn’t even consider air fryers. If they can’t turn something that already has a decent oil content to at least 60% of their deep fried version then it’s just a piece of junk.
But windy, not breezy.
Have you tried reheating pizza in a pan with a lid on the stove top?
It’s kinda amazing.
Does everyone else start it in the pan with cheese side down?
Cheese down for like one minute or less, then flip.
I use the convection function when I’m working with large amounts but for 1-2 people, the air fryer is much faster.
In how much of a hurry are you if you can’t wait 4 minutes for the oven to warm up?
What kind of oven do you have that warms up in 4 minutes?
A Bosch series 8, specifically model no. HBG976MB1
Even with an expensive convection oven I can’t get things to come out as good as they do with an air fryer. The small area through which the warm air circulates is probably the reason. The fan in my air fryer is the same size as the fan in a household oven with convection options, but a much smaller volume of air.
Most people don’t actually have convection ovens. Whoever wrote that post probably doesn’t even understand that there’s a difference between a convection oven and a traditional oven in the first place.
The things that consistently come out better for me in my air fryer (with less cook time) over the traditional oven are:
Home fries Bacon Salmon Chicken thighs Any vegetable Leftover steak Leftover pizza
There are actually very few things I care to use my traditional oven for, it’s all just quicker and comes out better in the air fryer. Pretty much anything where you want it to be browned/crispy without overcooking the inside or using a ton of butter will be better in the air fryer.
Because it’s not just a convection oven that’s needed, it’s also venting the moisture that comes off the product being cooked. It also needs to be powerful enough to keep the temperature up while that moist air gets exchanged. That’s a lot easier with a small cavity like an air-fryer than a regular sized oven. Commercial combi-ovens can do the same thing, and maybe there’s some high end consumer models available, but it’s a lot easier on the pocketbook to get an air fryer than a full size oven. I’m not totally sure, but they might also use impingement(concentrated streams of hot air, as opposed to just regular convection), which is another thing that’s available commercially, usually in pizza ovens or things like the merry-chef/turbo-chef(Subway’s sandwich toasters) but not common in consumer equipment.
You lost me at “without using a ton of butter”.
Haha yeah it’s tasty and effective for sure. I just find it a little too filling when I’m trying to bulk up and eat more protein so I use a Misto sprayer with either olive oil or canola oil. I’ve had the air fryer set off the smoke alarm a few times when I used butter so I prefer the oils with a higher smoke point.
In the vast majority of convection ovens the heating element is on the bottom. In airfryers the heating element is on top and it circulates the air a lot faster.
They are actually making convection ovens with an airfryer mode now, where it uses a heating element on top and has a more high powered fan.
The household ovens with convection settings that I’ve seen had the fan at the back, in addition to the radiant heating element at the bottom, but I definitely found the air fryer to be better.
I have seriously thought about buying a second air fryer because there are quite a few things that it’s completely better for, the problem I run into is trying to do larger meals (5+ people.) You either have to do batches which means more time actually engaged in cooking, or you have to break some things into the oven, and some into the air fryer.
I don’t know where you live and which ovens are common in your country, but convection ovens are the cheapest and most common thing in Europe. “Regular” oven mode is usually an extra feature for extra money. This is because convection is more energy efficient and the EU has strict efficiency rules.
Ah, yer in the US it’s the opposite, i recently bought a new oven with an induction cook top, spent $1k and even that one wasn’t convection.
Tilapia is also great.
Better efficiency but more importantly it heats almost instantly. Thing is like magic. No preheating for 5+ mins.
Plus having a second oven is fucking awesome. I’m out there on thanksgiving with an oven full of turkey, baking dinner rolls on the side like an absolute gangster.
Our oven literally broke (screw you fridgidaire btw) and we made thanksgiving dinner in the air fryer/ toaster oven. Even the turkey! Came out great!
Our current house came with Frigidaire appliances, never again.
The oven that comes with your stove is huge and it takes forever to preheat. I remember mine used to take like 20 minutes to preheat. For a lot of things that doubles the cooking time.
A toaster oven has way less space to heat, together with the fast convection makes it heat up almost instantly and also evenly. It’s just such a huge quality of life improvement.
I don’t know how to tell you this, but…
Thanksgiving was last week.
It sucks how immediately after Thanksgiving it’s illegal to cook turkey or bake dinner rolls. It’s particularly annoying that it’s like, a global rule even though Thanksgiving is a US thing.
I… what? They literally said they’re out here “on Thanksgiving”.
You can make that meal anytime you want!
I’ve never said otherwise, my guy.
You mean two months ago, right?
October 1st/2nd?
Oct 9th this year, 14th next year
Ah, gotcha. Fair shakes.
They’re a trend because they’re really good
It mostly is though? It’s definitely not a fryer. But I agree it still has it’s place even next to a convection oven, if not for anything else, then at least for heating the leftovers.
I guess it’s like a phone vs a tablet. They have a lot of similarities and a lot of functionality overlap and you could get by using one in place of the other but their use cases are different. Some people may only have one or the other, others may have both and use each at different times for different things. You wouldn’t say someone with a tablet has been fooled into buying a rebranded phone.
There’s literally no difference between a conventional oven with a fan forced function and an air frier.
Get yourself a mesh tray for your oven, preheat and you’ve just saved $100+ as well as kitchen storage for yet another gadget.
There’s literally no difference between a conventional oven with a fan forced function and an air frier.
My regular, full-sized convection oven has an air fryer mode. The main difference with the normal convection mode is that the fan runs much, much faster in air fryer mode. Because hot air circulates faster over the food, heat is transferred at a greater rate.
I do not understand why you are being downvoted. I guess there is a lot of air-fryer salespeople online… 😂
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s worse https://youtu.be/AASP4P5vRAA?si=aXMjrYK_aRIKX3YR
Thanks a lot, now I’m shopping for impingement ovens.
I tried, only renting looks barely affordable
There’s some decent looking units for like 5k.
I think what’s more convenient about an air fryer is that it is smaller than a convection oven. It’s the next generation of toaster oven.
I have an air fryer but I use its grill more than anything.
I totally would have bought into the air frier ecosystem earlier if I’d have known I’d be calling it my wife’s easy bake oven.
That’s why there are microwaves with a convection oven function.
The problem is it’s damn near impossible to actually find a good one that isn’t meant for a commercial kitchen.
I’ve found the fastest way to heat up any food that’s supposed to stay crispy on the outside is the microwave it and then bake it. If I could do this at the same time in the same machine that would be awesome.
I love my Sharp microwave/convection combo! Perfect for frozen pie and leftover pizza. 15+ years old now, not sure whether they still make 'em like that any more.
I have one of these, claims to be a combination Microwave/air fryer/convection oven. I was given a broken air fryer once, and when I took it apart to make it work again, I decided that an air fryer IS a convection oven.
Air fryers dont heat the entire house 5 degrees. Also they are like 15x faster to make food for 1.
They’ve also become popular in the UK recently due to the cost of living crisis there.
There is a difference between an air fryer and a convection oven. An air fryer has its heating element in the top with the fan so it is actively blowing hot air down on the food. It’s basically a convection broiler.
This right here. A lot of people saying ugh it’s just a convection oven, but they have a weak fan blowing from the back of the oven while the heat source is at the top and bottom, 8-10 inches away from the food. In an air fryer the heat source is only a few inches from the food, and the much more powerful fan is right behind it, blasting the hot air down and through the food. And the small size means no warm up time necessary so it’s far cheaper to run.
yeah they’re just small convection ovens. Great for heating bread rolls, we use ours more as a toaster than for “frying” (they don’t fry)
They’re a bit more than that.
They’re convection ovens where the fan sounds like they’re trying to take off and they vent a ton of hot moist air out the back.
If you put broccoli tossed in a bit of oil in an air fryer and a convection oven, it’ll come out way crisper in the air fryer.
