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I’ve spoken about energy saving already recently, but the news is still going mad for air fryers. After spending a whole week last week, furiously looking for a new one, I found it quite frustrating to even be able to tell the difference. In the past, I wanted one that turned, and cooked chips for the special needs lad. Nowadays, the choice for what he would be able to use is dire. Exceptionally dire. Almost every machine I’ve look at, is geared to the reading population, with temperatures, dials and fancy icons.
1 – Cooking With An Air Fryer Saves You Money
The statistics speak for themselves. An airfryer uses much less energy than your regular house oven. I’ve spoken about this sort of thing several times in the past, as I’ve used airfryers for years, and they really are perfect for our lifestyle.
Most electric ovens use from 3000 to 5000 watts on electric, but you should always check your own appliance. An airfryer is heating a much smaller space. That means it tends to cook faster, as a big oven takes longer and uses more energy to get to temperature and be ready to cook. With an airfryer, you switch on and it’s up and running. A full chicken can take about 40 or so minutes. So, as well as saving on usage, at approximately 1200-1800 watts, it saves cooking time.
2 – Healthier Cooking With An Air Fryer
We switched years ago. I have not had a deep fat fryer in any house I’ve lived in for my whole adult life. I did want something that gave the crispy deep fat fried look and crunch. Being in two house fires before the age of 12 has a habit of putting you off ever owning anything with a large pot of bubbling fat. Fryers in those days, were just big pots with fat in them. Even though there are now thermostatically controlled versions, I’ve never been able to live with one.
Air frying means using little to no oil. When we first got one, we used a very little oil. Nowadays, I just don’t bother to add any at all. Not cooking oil, means less fat, less calories and better preservation of the nutrients in our food.
3 – Time Saving In More Ways Than One
We’ve mentioned the speed of cooking is increased, but the one big thing that is in my life, is the complete bug bear of having to clean my big ovens. I have a very old, four cavity range cooker. I do love it, but it is old, probably very energy inefficient, and is a nightmare to clean.
With all my air fryers, where cleaning has been a challenge, it has solely been my own fault for letting some grease build up for too long as the teens cook. They never clean it afterwards. Even so, cleaning is so much easier than cleaning the oven, and I looked for my latest air fryer to have dishwasher safe parts, so that I can simply just throw them on in there.
4 – Reheat Your Leftovers In The Air Fryer
I was blindly reheating in the microwave for a long time. My old convection microwave gave up the ghost early on during the pandemic, so I resurrected my even older basic supermarket £20 microwave from a box in the garage and it’s still going strong. Granted, it had hardly been used, but I certainly got my money worth from it.
Fairly recently, I began reheating much of the leftovers in the air fryer. I’m absolutely gutted that I hadn’t thought of doing that before. It doesn’t work so great if you have an airfryer without temperature control, but I think most of the older style ones that are simply on/off and timer control, have been mostly phased out.
Leftovers reheated in the airfryer retain that newly cooked flavour and don’t go all soggy. Give it a go, as you won’t be disappointed.
5 – Accessories For Everything
We all have busy lives, right? The main thing we have to think about is value for money. Again, blindly just doing what I’ve always done, meant I was missing out on new things. There are accessories for almost every type of air fryer these days.
From inserts to keep the airfryer base clean, to tongs and racks for doubling or tripling the usable space, I really think there is an accessory for everything. The main problem is cutting it down to the accessories you will really use.
Buying An Air Fryer
To be fair, I still want that Phillips XXL Airfryer. It’s got a massive amount of space, and an app to make checking food easy. Cooking a large chicken could easily be an easy task with it, but it was slightly more than I was willing to pay. I’ve only used low end airfryers in the past, and they’ve served us well. I went with the Ninja due to replaceable drawers and I believe speed of cleaning.
When you look for an air fryer, you have to look at what your lifestyle needs. For me, it’s a high usage household with various cooking times during the day due to shift work, and speed of cleaning. Your needs may be very different.
What to look for.
- Look at the specification of each airfryer. Having a super dooper airfryer that feeds 6 people may be completely unnecessary for someone who only wants to use it once or twice a week for a couple or small family.
- Compare prices and reviews. Prices and availability change frequently, due to the higher uptake in 2021/2022, which saw many fryers out of stock for long periods. To get my Ninja, I had to spend about 2 months on the waiting list of the manufacturer, as every notification was already sold out before I got to the website.
- Size of the machine. Do you have enough counterspace for the machine you want. We all know that if a machine ends up in a cupboard, it rarely ends up being used, if ever.
My Favourite High End Air Fryers on Amazon
