I got an air fryer this year, and I definitively recommend it. It was cheap, I paid 350 reals (roughly 70 euros). In some cases the food is really similar to deep-fried food, but the biggest appeal of the device is as a small but powerful oven - specially for stuff like
chicken wings - they turn out wet but well cooked, with a crispy outside
reheating stale bread - pat it with a bit of water, then plop it in the air fryer.
frozen potato fries - as he mentions in the video they get damn great
milanesa - it doesn't get identical to deep-fried milanesa but it's really good, and way better than doing it in the oven.
If looking for a model make sure to get one with a detachable false bottom, otherwise you'll get the problem andrewta mentioned and won't be able to clean it right.
Reheating greasy/fried foods alone makes these things worth it imo. Im no detractor of cold pizza but its just not necessary anymore, this shit is magic
I was like you once and believed a convection oven and air fryer are the same thing and produce the same results. But I was wrong!
There is a subtle but crucial difference between an air fryer and a convection oven. A convection oven only circulates air around inside the oven, keeping the steam trapped with the food, while an air fryer actually removes all of the steam away from the food, allowing it to get much crispier much faster than is possible with a convection oven.
You are kind of right though, because now that air fryers have become popular, they've started marketting small toaster-oven-style convection ovens as "air fryers", even though they legitimately are not air fryers and do not cook the food the same way that an air fryer does.
My oven has gas burners in the top and bottom of the oven, and a tiny fan in the back for convection bake. The wee fan is meant to help distribute heat evenly throughout the oven. Convection is meant for baking multiple trays on both racks - it spreads the heat evenly throughout.
The air fryer has a big fan right behind the big heating element, which sits a few inches above the food, and blasts heat directly onto the food.
Similar components, but entirely different results.
Your comparison is rightly dispels the misconception that any “frying without oil” is happening though. An air fryer is closer to an oven, convection or otherwise, than it is to a deep fryer and pan-frying with oil. You just won’t get the same speed or results with a convection oven, though. They’re different designs.
I'm not entirely against calling it frying, in both cases you have heat transfer by immersion in a dry liquid as contact medium, as opposed to heating with infrared radiation (e.g. toaster, many kinds of spits), direct contact with no or little contact medium (hot pan with no/minimum oil, waffle iron), using water (which is wet) as contact medium which invariably makes things soggy instead of crispy and thus very different, or directly moving the atoms in the food (microwave).
That is: If you have a look at all the different ways to transfer heat into things then frying and baking are actually darn close to each other in the first place, compared to the rest. It's the reason you can definitely make a passable calzone in a pan. And air frying in particular brigs baking into the frying range of crispiness so I'd say fair is fair, you can fry with air as long as you make you air mean enough.
That's a big point in the video, the creator also thought that they're just glorified convection ovens. But it turns out that air fryers and convection ovens are optimized for different tasks so the food comes out differently, and there are other advantages to an air fryer too, depending on the situation. Just because they use the same technology doesn't mean they do the exact same thing.
someone in the comments on youtube pointed out that many purpose built air fryers exhaust the air so the interior stays drier, where convection ovens recirculate air and hang onto humidity.
Most of them are a pain in the ass to properly clean. My mom has a ninja air fryer. There is no way to remove the top grate. The grease builds up in it.
It’s not microplastics that worry me. It’s heated plastics, which is why I don’t use plastics in the microwave or use non stick cookware. BTW, the fancy air fryer seems to be all metal, like the toaster ovens.