Air fryers are the new hotness in the kitchen, but are they actually any different than a convection oven? [Technology Connections] walks us through the design of these countertop appliances to find out.
If you like your fries and chicken crispy instead of soggy, you traditionally had to eat out or spend the better part of an hour waiting on your food to cook to a crisp in the oven. Convection ovens significantly speed up this process by moving the air about and keeping the food from sucking most of the heat out of the stagnant layer just next to it.
It turns out that most air fryers are just a coil stove element and a fan placed above a basket which is just a fancy re-arrangement of the parts of a toaster or convection oven. The magic sauce here is the small size and the fact you don’t have to futz with pulling a hot wire basket out of your toaster or larger convection oven. The small size does give you a pretty big advantage in preheating and precise application of heat to the food for smaller batch sizes, but if you already have a convection oven, the advantages might not outweigh the additional space and cost of yet another kitchen gadget. We appreciate the sacrifice of eating “a lot of french fries” to test the differences between brands and conventional convection ovens for our edification.
If you’re looking for a way to make cookies faster instead of fries, how about this hack using a microwave and a heat gun? Or maybe it’s better to redesign the food instead of the appliance like this ramen in an edible package or these origami noodles.
“New” hotness? So, nothing new has appeared in the kitchens the last 5 or so years?
I won’t argue about the terminology of air fryers, convection ovens or whatever. But why do people who argue that “air fryers are just convection ovens” never include anything about the rate of heat transfer? Air fryers often have much more powerful fans which can blast your food with hotter air, cooking/burning it much faster. In fact, its possible to even burn high moisture content food on the outside, while still not letting it fully cook inside.
I think air fryers have a different enough operation to warrant a specific name, and no longer be associated with “oven” term.
On one particularly sad night, I heated my dinner nuggets with a plumbing hot air gun, it does the job. Is it also a convection oven? (or a hair dryer?)
Words are often used to distinguish degrees of difference rather than clearcut overall function. Easy examples include supercar vs. car, or the cliche of cultures from arctic climes having tons of words for snow and white, but often are missing colors that seem natural to those of us from other cultures.
I find the argument against the inclusion of “air fryer” in our popular lexicon pedantic enough to ignore (except in this comment, lol).
They work suspiciously similarly to a convection oven.
every day for dinner i use an air fryer to blast my corn syrup solids with microplastics, really helps mask the taste of the roundup
Related, Big Clive tore-down an air fryer a few months back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5XCj99QICo
I wonder if a gas denser than air would produce a better result.
Or maybe higher pressure?
Or maybe a lighter one, for better heat transfer per kg, like helium, or hydrogen.
But all ideal-ish gasses are pretty much the same for heat transfer. The non-ideal gas “water” is exceptionally good though, due to the phase transition.
doesn’t have to be water, vapor phase soldering is done with a liquid that boils at soldering temperature, very efficient at achieving a consistent temperature because on cold parts it condenses heating them
I just bought one, even though I own a conventional stove with a fan oven.
It’s great!
I would not buy one, but I did win one at a raffle a few years back and it is kinda nice for stuff you want crispy or if you just don’t want to heat up the whole house with the oven.
we used to have this super simple bucket full of oil that you plug in and presto. Called a FryDaddy I think. Deep fryer. no thermostat, nothing. and we found out that if the question is “will it be better deep fried” the answer is nearly always “yes.” it needed oil changes every 3-4 times unless you make shrimp or something then it got gross fast. And properly fried stuff doesn’t even come out greasy really*. then we figured having a boiling bucket of hot oil on the counter wasn’t the best for, reasons, and got an air fryer. its great, recommend. Plus easier to clean, no oil changes, and if the question is “will if be better in the air fryer” the answers is still, nearly always, yes. *air frying stuff made us realize things like chicken strips are already fried or something before frozen because they still come out kinda greasy. tater tots, frozen french fries… same story.