Air Fryers

Has anyone here used an air fryer? How effective is it? How does it really compare to deep frying?

While I would love a deep fryer, I'm put off by the hassle of dealing with the oil. The air fryer seems to use convection to simulate the effect of hot oil; while I don't think it's going to be the same as a deep fryer, I can imagine it coming close if used in small batches. I'll take 75% effectiveness in exchange for a 90% reduction in hassle.

I have no experience, but it sounds like it is just a small convection oven. I am extremely skeptical because the entire point of deep frying is the ability to heat via a surrounding liquid at much higher than boiling water temperatures. 390 degree air is nowhere close to as good a cooking medium.

It's exactly like a small convection oven. I'm not an engineer, but as I understand it, the circulating air is more efficient in a smaller space, so the fan and heating element together can move enough air around to maintain temperature better than it would in a standard sized oven.

Most fryer recipes I've sen don't call for the oil to go above 375 (probably out of safety, because a lot of common cooking oils have a smoke point as low as 400 degrees), so I'm less concerned about the max temperature than I am about the fact that air is a much less efficient conductor of heat than oil. This is supposedly mitigated by coating whatever you're cooking with a small smidgen of oil, but the question is whether that's enough to cook the interior of the food the way it would when submerged by hot oil.

That's clearly a definite no on a larger scale, but it seems plausible in a small batch, particularly something with a high surface area:mass ratio (like french fries). Again - I wouldn't ever expect it to match a real deep fryer, but I'd give it a shot if it could get to "pretty close".

I had never heard of these before. My sense is that they are expensive for what they are. You can get a self-contained deep fryer, which stores and filters oil, for a lot less money.

Wouldn't this be much the same premise as for popcorn--air popper v. popping kernels in oil? (and I HATE air popped popcorn )

Oil has better thermal conductivity than air... so the temp doesn't transfer the same:

even better article with relation to cooking/engineering

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/arti ... nd-Cooking

Would it be a similar process to broasting?

Puckjam wrote:Would it be a similar process to broasting?

Broasting is just another term for pressure frying. It's what KFC does, deep fry in oil under pressure to reduce cooking time.

Pressure frying was, in fact, invented by Colonel Sanders :

http://stellaculinary.com/podcasts/vide ... ure-frying

Increased pressure = higher boiling point of water (in the protein) = less water turned into steam (less moisture loss), and the water that does turn into steam (also higher temperature than sea level steam) causes less of an immediate temperature loss in the oil surrounding the protein.

Which came first, KFC or Broasted Chicken https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broasting? I'd always thought that Broasted chicken predates KFC.

from L.A.M. Phelan's wiki-biography :

In the early 1950s, approximately the same time as Colonel Sanders began franchising his KFC restaurant chain, Phelan developed the broasting method of cooking chicken, for which he invented a modified commercial-grade pressure cooker. He founded the Broaster Company in 1954 to manufacture and market the machines.

Like many great ideas/inventions, looks like a few people were working towards this method around that time... The Colonel was originally cooking fried chicken in hot oil in a modified pressure cooker (not intended for frying) - so the major change was designing a pressure-cooking fryer rather than just frying in a pressure cooker... If you do a patent search, there are many designs/claims to inventing pressure frying (all around the 1950's-1960's) - L.A.M.'s patent was filed in 1954 - the colonel's in 1966, but it seems the colonel was frying in pressure cookers before he invented his pressure fryer

rubbbqco wrote:from L.A.M. Phelan's wiki-biography :

In the early 1950s, approximately the same time as Colonel Sanders began franchising his KFC restaurant chain, Phelan developed the broasting method of cooking chicken, for which he invented a modified commercial-grade pressure cooker. He founded the Broaster Company in 1954 to manufacture and market the machines.

Like many great ideas/inventions, looks like a few people were working towards this method around that time... The Colonel was originally cooking fried chicken in hot oil in a modified pressure cooker (not intended for frying) - so the major change was designing a pressure-cooking fryer rather than just frying in a pressure cooker... If you do a patent search, there are many designs/claims to inventing pressure frying (all around the 1950's-1960's) - L.A.M.'s patent was filed in 1954 - the colonel's in 1966, but it seems the colonel was frying in pressure cookers before he invented his pressure fryer

That's pretty much what I thought. I can remember going to broasted chicken places (Johnston's, Chicken in the Rough, Henny Penny, and maybe even Wesley's) long before the Colonal made his first appearance, at least in these parts.

"It's exactly like a small convection oven. I'm not an engineer, but as I understand it, the circulating air is more efficient in a smaller space, so the fan and heating element together can move enough air around to maintain temperature better than it would in a standard sized oven. "

I'm an Engineer and the reason a convection oven will cook faster is because the blowing air across the surface of the food transfers heat faster than natural thermal convection.
My Viking has an air duct at the top backsplash through which the air exhausts.
The additional advnatage touted is more unifrom heating across the oven space.
But since in the Viking the flames are at the bottom, it's crispy critters real fast on the bottom rack if you don't watch it.
I'm surprised George Forman isn't selling this product!
I use a deep cast iron Lodge 'Chicken Fryer'.
Large, heavy but it works!-Richard

Ok, this is the official explanation on how it's supposed to work:



Most of the videos online are either terrible, or from people being paid to sell it (not a promising sign), but this looked pretty genuine:



The color on the fries don't look great, but it does seem better than anything short of a real deep-fry. I wonder if a two-temperature cook would work with it.

I have to admit it - I finally bought an air fryer 6 months ago and I probably use it more than any other appliance now. I don't even use it to "fry" much. I have cooked steaks and burgers perfectly, I baked a cake, small pizzas, heat up leftover pizza, etc. When I do want to air fry something you'd typically deep fry like cheese sticks or french fries I've noticed that if you simply put the food in and cook it there will be no difference from the oven other than maybe it'll be a little faster. However if you spritz a little oil on the food it does get that deep fried texture and taste but with a fraction of the oil. For that (and my health) I am thrilled. I've yet to do things like homemade fried chicken or fresh cut fries in it. I also love that I don't really have to pre-heat the air fryer so most things I cook in it are done by the time my gas oven is done pre-heating. I have a unit that has a lid on top that opens like a garbage can and it has a window with a bright light so I can see the food cooking rather than having to keep pulling out a basket to see if things are done. I also put a pre-cut foil sheet on the bottom of the pan to make clean up easy. My only real complaint is that I can't cook a lot more food at once and I'm likely to eventually buy one of the toaster oven sized air fryers.

Lastly I can get lazy in the kitchen and I don't feel like cooking all the time. It's much easier to throw a burger in the air fryer and check the doneness with my Thermapen than to deal with the mess (and grease) of frying on my stove or going outside to grill (let's say it's nasty outside).

Ram4 wrote:I have to admit it - I finally bought an air fryer 6 months ago and I probably use it more than any other appliance now.

Same here. I've had mine for over 2 years.
Squirting oil on most food is a must. I useBamboo Steamer Liners, Premium Perforated Parchment Steaming Papers for easy cleanup

Ram4 wrote:I have to admit it - I finally bought an air fryer 6 months ago and I probably use it more than any other appliance now. .

Which one did you buy?

HonestMan wrote:

Ram4 wrote:I have to admit it - I finally bought an air fryer 6 months ago and I probably use it more than any other appliance now. .

Which one did you buy?

It's a Chefman RJ38-R8 Air Roaster. I've been using a huge Costco box of 500 pre-cut foil sheets to line the bottom each time I use it.

Prime Day and some birthday gift cards landed me with an Air Fryer delivered today.

I will report back once I use it.

I just purchased a Farberware 3.2 QT Air Fryer last month.

If you are expecting fried goods that are as good as those coming out of a deep fat fryer, I think that you will be disappointed. However, if you are looking for food that is fairly similar without all of the fat and costs of deep fat frying, it is a pretty good alternative.

It did an excellent job on a panko-breaded chicken breast. It does very well on chicken wings as long as you do NOT follow the instructions that are in the cookbook with the fryer. It does great on tater tots as well as garlic-rosemary potatoes.

One problem is that the cookbook with the unit is mediocre. If you follow the cooking times, the food will be undercooked.

I have only had the unit for a month and have not used it as much as I had planned.

The unit is now down to $35 at Walmart.com. If you buy it in the store, I think that the price is about $69. Believe it or not.

Helen Rosner wrote a good article about air fryers. Biggest takeaway for me was that if you think of them as a machine to cook food, it'd be easier to wrap our minds around it.

She echoed similar sentiments as other posters. Great in some cases and not so great as a replacement for deep frying.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyor ... season/amp