The best air fryers for 2023

BrownianMotion , 11 months ago

I just want to say, if you have an electric oven… you have an ‘air fryer’.

Usually electric ovens have indirect and direct options of heating (upper elements for example, compared to ones hidden in the back closer to the fan).

Granted a tiny ‘air fryer’ might do something a little quicker. But I struggle to see their benefits if you have an electric fan forced oven (all electric are). Its an additional $100 - $200 for no real benefit, other than something else you have to clean. And I’d argue that cleaning an oven tray out of the oven is much easier (granted I have a dishwasher) than baskets and oil catchers etc, but can you put those parts of an oven fryer in the dishwasher? ( I use cheap cookie coolers on an oven tray if I am going to cook something like chicken that would drip, keeping the pieces crisp.)

If your oven is gas or coal, then absolutely - get the Air Fryer.

d3Xt3r , 11 months ago

As someone who has both a regular full-size electric oven and an air fryer, I use my air fryer a lot more and would 100% recommend it.

• It’s not just quicker, it’s a lot quicker, considering you don’t need to do a 15 minute preheat like regular ovens. On the other hand, my air fryer only needs 2 minutes.
• Saves a lot of energy - I mean, who doesn’t like to save energy? Especially when I want to reheat stuff, I’m done with the air fryer - even cleaning it - all in the duration a conventional oven would take just to finish heating up.
• In my experience of cleaning both ovens and air fryers, I’d say an air fryer is easier to clean, simply because the surface area is a lot smaller. Sure, you can put an oven tray in the dishwasher, but don’t you clean the rest of the oven? As for an air fryer, you may be able to put the tray/basket in the dishwasher, depending on the model, but even otherwise, a couple of quick swipes with a paper towel does the trick.

In saying that, newer tabletop electric ovens also double up as air fryers, such as the one by Breville - so if you have the space and don’t have an existing oven, get one of of these I’d reckon as they would be more versatile.