Dinah, you don't mention your age, but people of retirement age find themselves figuring out what to get rid of, rather than coveted things to accumulate. Like me! I already own essential kitchen equipment that lives in the garage (as an air fryer would have to) because there's no more room in my kitchen, so the thought of adding yet another gadget to my batterie de cuisine is frankly wearying. It's not that I'm too old ... it's just that I have fewer years left to use one, and I'm just full up and fed up with too many belongings!
I am retired and am also in the process of paring down. My kitchen is also very small and anything added means something needs to be eliminated. It helps to have the experiences of others to weigh in my decision. Many thanks!
I’m admittedly a kitchen gadget nut, but love, love, love my Phillips Air Fryer. I use it almost every day. It does the very best job of reheating pizza and any leftovers you want to be crispy. I use it to toast nuts, make French fries, and roast all kinds of vegetables. The only failure I’ve had is when I tried to make donuts. Disaster.
Melissa Clark at the NYTimes just had an article on this topic! Linky: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/dining/air-fryer-recipes.html
Her take was that it wasn't for her but for people who want a mini-oven for high-temperature roasting it would be useful. She does say it doesn't actually fry very well. I think if it was me, I'd replace my microwave with a microwave/convection oven combo like my parents have. More expensive probably, but more flexible, too, and better suited to how I cook.
I have a smaller air fryer, the DASH compact air fryer (in a pretty teal color!), and I love it! What I like about air frying is it saves you a lot of time, cooks things evenly, and serves as an extra oven when you need to cook things at the same time.
I find that air frying is super helpful if you roast vegetables often since it cuts back on the amount of time it takes to roast them (about 13-15 minutes). There's times where I want to bake salmon and roast veggies at the same time, but they either require a different oven temperature setting, or the flavor of the salmon ends up in the roasted veggies, so being able to air fry the veggies instead helps a lot when needing to roast/bake things at the same time.
They are also great for cooking meat such as, steak, chicken, pork, baking things like small cakes and muffins, and roasting nuts. I also bake tofu in mine all the time for a perfect crispness!
I live in Brooklyn where I don't have a ton of kitchen space, but the air fryer I have fits nicely in a cabinet, and for me it is worth it as I use it pretty frequently.
This is really helpful. I also have a very small kitchen so appreciate the additional roasting/baking capability while the oven is occupied with something else. Evenness of cooking, time saving, and crisping are critical features, too. Why did I ever think I didn’t need this? Thank you!
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Melissa Clark at the NYTimes just had an article on this topic! Linky: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/dining/air-fryer-recipes.html
Her take was that it wasn't for her but for people who want a mini-oven for high-temperature roasting it would be useful. She does say it doesn't actually fry very well. I think if it was me, I'd replace my microwave with a microwave/convection oven combo like my parents have. More expensive probably, but more flexible, too, and better suited to how I cook.
I have a smaller air fryer, the DASH compact air fryer (in a pretty teal color!), and I love it! What I like about air frying is it saves you a lot of time, cooks things evenly, and serves as an extra oven when you need to cook things at the same time.
I find that air frying is super helpful if you roast vegetables often since it cuts back on the amount of time it takes to roast them (about 13-15 minutes). There's times where I want to bake salmon and roast veggies at the same time, but they either require a different oven temperature setting, or the flavor of the salmon ends up in the roasted veggies, so being able to air fry the veggies instead helps a lot when needing to roast/bake things at the same time.
They are also great for cooking meat such as, steak, chicken, pork, baking things like small cakes and muffins, and roasting nuts. I also bake tofu in mine all the time for a perfect crispness!
I live in Brooklyn where I don't have a ton of kitchen space, but the air fryer I have fits nicely in a cabinet, and for me it is worth it as I use it pretty frequently.
This is really helpful. I also have a very small kitchen so appreciate the additional roasting/baking capability while the oven is occupied with something else. Evenness of cooking, time saving, and crisping are critical features, too. Why did I ever think I didn’t need this? Thank you!