I switched to AirFriteuter Cooking for a month: 6 lessons I learned

I have tested many air frituses. At any time I have set up two or three air fritten on my counter, giving the room the warm, hospitable atmosphere of a showroom of devices.

While I spent more time using them for work, I broke the habit of switching on my oven automatically when it was time to cook – at least for simple tasks.

I started to wonder if I really had to use my oven. So I decided to exchange all my oven for an air fryer to find out. After all, an air frye does not eat food. It is a mini -convection oven that can cook almost everything that a normal oven can.

The rules of the experiment were that I had to cook everything in the air fryse that I would usually cook in the oven, and I could not eat beige frozen food for every meal.

This is what I learned in that month.

Warming up means reconsidering

My first act of food violence was unthinkable to heat a few pizza slices using the recommended warming temperature of 170 ° C/340 ° F for a little too long, which she turned quickly and efficiently into cardboard olives.

If you have a powerful air frituse and you cook almost anything but frozen, breaded chicken or chips, the best cooking advice is to reject the heat at 10 ° C/20 ° F.

There is a learning curve to switch to cooking the air frituse, and while selecting perfect cooking temperatures, you can always add a few minutes of extra time. You cannot restore cardboard in pizza.

Microwave + air fryer is still faster than an oven

I made the cakes of individual shepherd in stone dishes, because I feel so felt, and heated them the next day. Usually I would put them in the oven for at least 45 minutes (and they would probably still be cold in the middle), but while the oven was forbidden, I used the air frituse instead.

They came out perfectly – and were ready quickly – with a light, crispy crust on the potato. But it was still a bit annoying to keep testing the center of the cake to see if it was cooked. Some air frees, including the Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone, have a built -in probe that will immediately solve this problem. But not mine.

The best option, it turned out, was to first magnet the cakes of the shepherd to warm them through and then put them in the air fryer for a golden glow for 7 minutes. The Microwave + Air Fryer Combo also works well with jacket apples.

Try not to cook cak skewer in a microwave: the results will make you sad.

Baking is easier than you expect

Baking a cake in an air frituse has the atmosphere of a novelty, such as playing Clair de Lune on the Kazoo. But it is not only possible, it is faster and cheaper. Crucial – and perhaps surprisingly – the cake will taste exactly the same.

The most important limitation is the amount of cooking space in your air fryse. To bake in a 5-6-liter/quartz quartz with once, you need a small, 15 cm/6in round cake (buy one from Amazon UK/Amazon US).

However, the air frituse that I used, the Flexdrawer, offers enough space to bake a full-size cake.

Follow the recipe exactly as you would do for an oven, but turn the heat off at about 20 ° C/40 ° F – Baking needs an even softer heat.

If the air fryse is too hot, the outside of the cake cooks so much faster than the inside that it prevents it from rising well. The cake will be closed and yurt-shaped, which is probably not what you were aiming for.

Experimenting is worth it

Drunk with the success of the Air Fryer Cake, I started to use the air frye for everything: even things that I would not normally not cook in the oven. I made Gnocchi crispy, roasted sandwiches, roasted vegetables and thawed peas.

Where I would usually steam vegetables, I would bake them instead, with a little oil and garlic. It may not be as healthy as steaming, but this concern was considerably heavier weighed by the benefits of glory.

Forget 10-inch pizzas

Yet there is one thing that a traditional air fryse simply cannot do. You can forget a supermarket pizza. It just doesn’t fit.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Once, to follow the letter of the challenge that I had assigned myself, I cut a pizza in two and the pieces cooked one after the other in the air frituse. They turned out to be good, but to be honest it is a strange thing to do.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Unless you want to invest in an air fride or a special pizza oven, you must use your regular oven for pizza.

There are a few other things that you should not cook in an air frye: leafy vegetables, including spinach, that can be blown around, and everything with a wet batter. I would also cook a steak in something other than a pan.

My oven now seems medieval

Why is it so huge? Why does everything take so long to cook? Why is it almost impossible to clean?

Opening my oven is now back as time travel to a filthy medieval blacksmith, a place where I really don’t want to have lunch.

After a month excluding an air fryer, I rarely use my oven now. I have not completely reached the stage of storing vintage denim in it, such as Carmy in the bear, but unless I make a fully roast dinner or cook a pizza, it is not switched on.

It is difficult to assess how important the energy saving of this experiment was (although cooking air fruits will certainly save you in the long term money), but the amount of time and hassle that I saved in cooking and cleaning up was enormous.

Which air frituse did I use?

I decided for the Ninja Foodi Flexdrawer because, as the name suggests, it is a flexible stove. You can use the two, 5.2L cooking zones separately, or use only one, or remove the distributor in between to create a huge, 10.4l “megazon”. This gives you the space to cook very roasted or to bake full-size cakes.

You can read my FlexDrower review to find out more, or view our most recommended air fritents with a double zone to see how it stands out against the competition. The Flexdrawer is not available in the US, but the very similar Ninja Foodi FlexBasket is. Keep in mind that it is a bit smaller, with a capacity of 7qt over the two cooking areas.

To get a similar volume of cooking space as the FlexDrower, you can also use an air fryer oven. We have tested and assessed some of the best, which you can browse in our air fryer-oven round. We also have recommendations for the best Ninja Air Fryer and the best air frituse in general.