Well yeah but it heats up a lot faster using a lot less energy
And it moves way more air than a normal oven, thus removing water vapor faster. This water vapor that partly steams the food, resulting in moisture saturated air that in turn prevents more moisture from escaping, is the main difference between a frying pan and an oven. A deep fryer replaces the water with oil, an air fryer just extracts the water quicker. Both prevent the food from cooking in water or steam, resulting in a crispy texture.
I was very surprised that it cooked such moist chicken breasts without drying them out, I think you possibly just explained why that is! 😅
You mean like a... Convection oven?!?!
It absolutely is a convection oven however the rate of airflow is faster therefore the reaction is more pronounced.
This is the big thing. So many times we want to heat up some left-overs and that would turn soggy in a microwave, but heating up the oven to reheat a few square inches of food is a vast waste of energy.
These take up a lot of space, though. I think one of those double ovens, where one is only tall enough for one tray, would be ideal. Convection, of course, but I haven't seen a built-in without a convection mode in years.
It doesn't take half an hour to pre heat, it doesn't heat up the whole house, and I'm not sending my power bill through the roof every time I want to make a meal for one person lol
My oven heats up in like 3-5 mins
Lucky you! I've never in my life used an oven that took less than 15 minutes to pre heat at the bare minimum
Is it gas? Getting an electric oven to 450 usually takes 15 minutes.
I thought you guys had 240v circuits precisely for this kind of load? On a decent 30a 230v circuit (they generally don't use anywhere near 30a though) here in Europe it takes considerably less than that. I'd say mine takes 5-8mins for 230c (which is around 450f) and it has a rated power of 3500w.
It's a small convection oven. Most ovens are not convection ovens, they're fan ovens or gas ovens. The biggest downside to both of them is that what you're mostly heating up is empty space.
I can practically fill my air fryer with enough food for one person. Clearly more efficient.
Also because of the small size it heats up basically instantly, none of this preheating the oven for 45 minutes before you can cook anything.
They also use air that moves a lot faster than a convection oven, which makes a huge difference.
Most ovens are not convection ovens, they're fan oven
As far as I understand the nomenclature, fan ovens are convection ovens.
It's a concentrated convection oven. It's not magic, but I definitely like mine. Great for side dishes like roasted veggies. Also uses wayyyyy less power and time than a full oven when you're only baking something small enough to fit in an air fryer
I bought mine because it was cheap and didn't really think i use it all too much. I hardly ever used my oven ever since. It's nothing special per se, but it uses less energy and everything goes way faster, because you don't have to heat up a really big box for a piece of bread.
It's a nice little convection oven. Especially great for one or two people.
I recently acquired my first 'air fryer'.
Yes, it's an oversized, convection toaster oven, with a lot of fancy programs built in that I probably don't need.
Having had a (gas) convection oven in the past, it's just not the same. It heats up faster, and seems to do a better job of circulating air. Supposedly I had a pretty nice convection oven, too.
I can make really tasty falafel in my 'air fryer' that uses a tiny fraction of the oil that is used for deep frying; I wasn't able to make decent falafel in my convection oven. Does a great job with frozen fries and tater tots too. I need to try roasting brussels sprouts in it, maybe some asparagus.
So far, it's an easy 9/10. The only downside is the footprint.
Oven with a fan. Checkmate fanboys.
One might call it a convection oven.
If one doesn't realize you can trick Americans into buying anything that implies frying.
Even worse - it is a counter appliance and therefore the path of degeneracy.
When you're paying to heat 5000% more air than you need to, it doesn't matter what the device that saves you money is called.
It is a bit more complicated than that. The WAY it moves the air is different than in a convection oven, so it "fries" a bit better.
This guy does a great breakdown of how it isn't "just a convection oven"
Toaster oven with a fan.
Oversized fan. A lot of toaster ovens already were able to do convection cooking, just need to move more air and provide a basket to call it an air fryer.
As a side note, I highly recommend a good toaster oven to everyone. It heats up so much faster than the normal oven, and when reheating things, it doesn't ruin the texture like a microwave. And I don't have to store separate toaster and air fryer.
Toaster ovens are also good for annealing small amounts of metal!
I love this so much. The idea of needing to anneal small amounts of metals on a regular enough basis that it’s worth getting a toaster oven to pull double duty is so foreign to me. However knowing that there are people out there for whom that can be a genuine factor when deciding whether or not to buy a toaster oven, fills me with glee.
Yeah it is a small oven, but you use it like a microwave.
Throw it in, put on a timer, and in a couple of minutes your thing will be ready.
And it’ll taste so much better than when you put it in a microwave. Microwave makes things soggy. ovens make things crispy.
Mine also comes as an air grill and making hamburgers from frozen patties takes roughly 15 minutes, bonus it doesn't make a mess on my stovetop and most of the fat drips at the bottom.
The drawer-style air fryers are kinda dumb but the ones with the rotating basket on the inside really do cook french fries way better than you could in a regular oven spread out on a sheet pan and without having to heat up a bunch of oil in a pan to get similar texture.
If only there wasn't a repository of human knowledge that could have cleared everything up before this meme was made:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection_oven#Air_fryer
And BTW, it's closer to an impingement oven
Do you expect someone who posts on 4chan to know impingement? Shit I don't even know what that means
There are two kinds of reactions to trying out an air fryer:
"Wow, this is so much better than a normal oven" and
"Wow, this is so much worse than a normal fryer"
I am very much of the latter opinion
Mine is
“Wow, this can prepare so many different things in an easy and lazy way, i dont care if its not as tasty, beats not having food because i was to tired”
Eh, to me the thing is trying to do is cook food in a way that's similar to deep frying, but with a tiny fraction of the oil. I think they do that reasonably well. It's not for everything, but they really are good for a number of things - way better for reheating leftover fried food than either a microwave or regular oven. I like the way vegetables come out, too.
Air fryers are basically just small convection ovens. If you have an oven then an air fryer does nothing you can't already do. That said, it does cook some things slightly faster due to the confined space. I've found mine will cook a chicken in just over an hour saving maybe 20 or 30 minutes on a regular oven. I guess it also saves energy / money but whether it ever pays for itself is another question.
Also heats up considerably faster than a normal oven. It's so good for reheating most stuff.
Generally it will cook a lot of things better than consumer ovens because consumer ovens are fucking garbage.
But yeah, it's just a small convection oven that heats faster and more evenly. I love mine. I mostly only use the oven for things that require a solid tray or don't do well with the fan in close proximity (mostly certain frozen foods). And baking.
Air fryer is just pure convenience. I could cook the chicken in the oven and probably have it come out okay. But, I could cook it in the air fryer, have nice and crunchy skin and save a pan.
It is a small fan forced oven. Good for heating up frozen snacks but usually too small to cope with large families and probably not worth bothering if you have a good oven. Since I have a completely shit oven that cooks unevenly, never the right temp, takes ages to heat and heats the whole house up in summer just to make some chicken nuggets for the kids I think they are awesome. If I actually gave a shit about cooking I probably wouldn't bother. If was single I would probably still rate the toaster oven as the most versatile benchtop appliance (though the biggest fire risk) followed by sandwich press but if you have to heat up manufactured rendered chicken waste shaped like dinosaurs for kids they are surprisingly practical.
I've already seen ovens that now have an 'air fryer' mode in place of 'convection'
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