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Wait until you find out about microwaves!
I haven’t used my oven at all since I got the air fryer.
They are good for quick small batch stuff, but way less efficient than modern fan oven for anything bigger. Once you run for long enough to mitigate heating the ovens larger thermal mass, oven always wins.
The first commercial convention oven was released in the 1940s. The first prototype of the general concept happened in the 1910s.
Even if you mean the modern household tabletop convenience version, the Nuwave convection oven was already an informercial staple by 2003.
When talking about air fryers, my husband once rightly pointed out that air fryers are just countertop convection ovens.
I walked over to him, held my index finger up to his lips, and whispered to him, “shhh. Air fryer. AIR FRYER.” 🤣
Yes. And I think it’s important to understand exactly what a convection oven actually is.
At its most basic, it’s an oven with a heating element and a fan that circulates hot air around the cooking chamber. That’s it. The circulating air improves heat transfer and helps food cook and brown more evenly.
Now, manufacturers have increasingly started calling a particular implementation of convection an “air fryer” and charging a premium for it, as though they’ve invented an entirely new cooking technology. They haven’t. Convection cooking has been around for decades.
An air fryer is essentially a compact, highly optimized convection oven: hot air is circulated rapidly around the food, usually with a basket or perforated tray that allows that air to contact more of the food’s surface.
So when you’re shopping for a range and you see one advertised as having an “Air Fry” function, don’t automatically assume you’re getting some revolutionary new appliance. In many cases, you’re paying extra for a marketing term applied to a convection system that has existed for generations.
Wouldn’t the presence of a fan turn them into a forced convection oven?
Air fryers, and to a lesser extent fan ovens, use a fan to move the air rather than just using air convection currents.
To put it in perspective, that’s just over 100 years out of 4.5 billion the earth has existed. Or 300 million years or so complex life existed (that mostly wouldn’t be able to fathom the core concepts you’d need to know to even understand what having an air fryer means, where I’d consider “figured out that forest fires can contain more delicious food in some places (where intensity is high enough to cook plants and animals but not enough to turn them to charcoal)” to be pretty smart). Or several million that hominids have existed and using stone or better tools. Or several thousand since we figured out how to manage our food production rather than depend on always finding it. Or several hundred since we got much better at harnessing energy.
Also, I’d push back on a) the invention date being more relevant than the mass release date, and b) early convection ovens counting as “air fryers”, so that 100 years should probably also be reduced.
why do people like air fryers more than toaster ovens? i don’t get it
Most toaster ovens, even ones with strong convection for “air frying”, are not quite consistent enough in their heating. You have to pay far more than you would for an air fryer to get even heat coil distribution and a good door seal for that. The specific kind of rapid cooking that dessicates and browns the surface you get out of air fryer devices is just kind of hard to replicate outside of them.
If you ever look inside an air fryer you can kind of immediately see why – the heater-to-volume ratio is absurdly close. You have the equivalent of the biggest coiltop stove burner directly above a few quarts of air volume with a fan forcing air from it to circulate. It’s just kind of unfair of a comparison for both toaster ovens and even full-size ones that advertise an “air fryer” mode by comparison for that reason.
I have an old toaster oven that has a really weak convection fan but it moves so little air it is nowhere near an air fryer. The timer doesn’t work anymore and it’s ugly but I have another timer and it just works. I don’t own an air fryer and I’m not going to buy one until my toaster oven dies.
I got a ninja air fryer for 50 bucks because the old Philips one needed internal cleaning to stop it smoking
I’m all for reducing waste, this was the first time I threw something out that technically was functional
I didn’t lose any sleep. And I fry free of smoke. Can recommend new stuff sometimes just because we don’t live that long anyway
I prefer to fry potatoes, but you can fry shit if you like. Just keep it in your air fryer.
You’ve heard of boiling shit in a kettle, now get ready for frying shit in an air fryer
Cool, where can I trade in my air-fryer for a capitalism-free world that isn’t ai-enhanced descend into fascism while the planet is burning?
Can I suggest you take a break from the Internet for a while?
I’d like to not be reliant on a small handful of corporations and cheap plastic devices, tbh.
Weren’t we frying shit in the air with old cast iron stoves as well?
We probably did in old Mesopotamia with clay ovens or something.
And breathing in fly ash from the coal, which contains increased concentrations of uranium and thorium.
Compared to that an airfryer is a god send.
Is an airfryer just a small fan oven?
Its a small convection oven, that works more efficiency because the heating element is like an inch above the food, and heating a very tightly confined area, so intense temperatures can be more concentrated and easily achieved.
Yes, they’re countertop convection ovens.
What if I want to fry food with the fires of 7 Hells
I hate that I ever, or will ever, eat food that didn’t involve this. What is it?
I hope that’s real brick behind that. I’ve seen some pretty gnarly damage from people using their BBQs too close to the side of the house.
We can fry shit with the air, so nice
Alps look ok!
The glass is half not boiled kinda guy
The first night I owned an air fryer, I tossed in some shitty frozen tater tots that had been in my freezer for way too long, and they came out so delightfully crispy that I cooked two more servings.
I realized immediately that this would be a problem. It’s a bit too easy to make delicious stuff that’s pretty bad for me. I nearly made myself sick of wings within like 2 weeks. That was a close one. Fuckin love wings.
I got rid of my home deep fryer for health reasons. It is dangerously easy, cheap, and quick to make quality fries…
But it’s also quick and cheap to make absurdly-delicious roasted veg.
My favorite: take a bag of frozen broccoli florets, mist it with some oil (it’ll harden on them), sprinkle with some salt and pepper and toss in it at 400 degrees F for like, 15 minutes. Halfway through I pull the basket and drain the accumulated water in the bottom to increase browning.
Delicious, crispy, I can devour an entire pound of broccoli that way in like 5 minutes.
They’re literally small convection ovens rebranded. They’re not magic.
Look up how microwaves work. Those are way, way fucking cooler. The way they generate the microwaves is cool as hell.
Microwaves are a prime example that if something’s cool doesn’t mean it’s good for it’s job.
Btw, the part of microwave that turns electricity into microwave is called magnetron. Freaking magnetron. I didn’t know real inventions could have names as cool as that.
Microwaves are cool in theory but in practice the food is almost always soggy and mushy. Maybe I just don’t know how to use them, but I’m rarely happy with the result. Even reheating leftovers, I’d rather do in a saucepan
Great for vegetables, IME.
A more efficient and quicker small convection oven you can easily buy for 30 bucks and pop in a cupboard when you’re not using it.
The price really depends where you live, eg: where i live an air fryer can cost 20-40€ , a microwave is often on the 50€ price range
Same here.
Meanwhile a reliable full size oven can easily cost 1000$/€ and consumes much more energy. Not always cheap/easy to install either.
For people on a budget, who often live in a small/rented place, an air fryer’s a life saver. Plug it in, cook something, pop it away if you need some more space. Don’t even need a kitchen. Just use it next to an open window or vent.
A rice cooker is similarly useful. Cheap, but you can use it to cook far more than rice, keep stuff warm, and largely replace a stove top. Once again, often without the need for space or installation.
I almost never use my microwave or oven because of the air frier.
Things don’t need to be revolutionary to be life changing. Could I have used the convection oven for this one slice of pizza? Sure. Would I ever? Hell no.
But yeah, microwaves really are neat. We’re going to fling these electrons around in these very specific magnetic fields and out pops light you can’t see.
When I was working in repairs, we got orders sometimes to repair those microwaves. And the only thing that I learned is that if magnetron (coolest technology name in my opinion) died, then it similar to TVs with dead display — price of repair would be basically close to price of whole device.
Meh.
I have an old NEFF microwave. Fixing that involved popping in some new mica paper for a few bucks.
Microwaves are cool, sure, but they have a completely different utility. If I want a small amount of food hot, it goes in the microwave. If I want a small amount of food crispy, it goes in the air fryer. If I want a large amount of food hot or crispy it goes in the oven, with convection on or off depending on the end goal.
If you want crispy, heat with the air fryer.
If want moist and hot, use a microwave.
Don’t cook soup in the air frier or toast in the microwave.
They’re closer to impingement ovens than convection ovens.
Convection ovens (or “fan forced ovens” in some countries) use a fan to gently and evenly circulate the hot air, whereas impingement ovens and air fryers use higher velocity fans to blow the heat directly onto the food.
So it’s an overkill blowdrier, got it.
And a blow dryer is just overkill evaporation.
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Just saying it’s not new or miraculous technology 🤷🏼 it’s just a clever and convenient consumer product.
The better we can differentiate consumer trends and marketing from actual technological innovation, the better off we’ll be. cough AI cough
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AI is more of a drug than an innovation, IMPO.
lol, this was their comment before they deleted all their comments in this thread:
Lemmy: Al BAD. AM CONTRIBUTING TO THE CONVERSATION Left wing progressives are such bots they don’t even qualify as Al
What I said was a meaningful addition, IMO. It was related to the thread and added another perspective.
“I AM GIVEN REASONABLE ARGUMENTS AGAINST MY POINT AND I LASH OUT AND DELETE ALL MY COMMENTS”
lol. 🫶
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Ah, you’re a marketing drone, that explains a lot.
I use AI often enough and it’s just a shiny turd for anything complex. Good thing it’s good at stealing art, so that’s a big boon for marketing people.
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Alright but hang on, let me preheat the oven first
you know what would be a lot cooler? same thing not needing electricity (concentrated solar can get hot enough and heat can be stored in hot oil)
But it wasn’t sunny today and I wanted fries and don’t have space to store hot oil :(
skill issue
For a rain enjoyer, you sure like spreading pro sun propaganda
There would be no rain without sun
skill issue
That doesn’t sound right. But I don’t know enough about rain to dispute it…
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Just power it using solar panels?
concentrated solar heating gets you there using 1/4 of that space and allows for simple energy storage
“simple” storage of burning hot oil mmhm
yeah you put it in a barrel, pump hotter oil through coiled pipe, hot (storage) oil floats to top, when you draw heat through another coiled pipe cold oil falls to bottom. just put mineral wool around it. much cheaper than batteries
solar water heaters work the same way except they use water
So now to cook something I need:
- A solar collector
- Hot oil storage
- Heat exchanger (unless I’m deep frying I guess)
- Hot oil piping between collector, storage and cooking appliance
I’ll take the solar panels which I already have wiring for, are useful when there’s a surplus (because I can sell the electricity) and which also power my computer. Not that I have panels at the moment.
airfrier
The appliance that mostly everybody already had under another name (at least in Europe). An then they renamed it as another thing and everyone bought one. The marketing worked.
Not it’s not and I’m tired of the nerds screeching.
A Ferrari is very different from a Honda.
Air friers have a much lower total volume while moving a much higher volume of air. The effect is far more pronounced and cook times are halved.
Well, the only person who is screeching are you with your car manufacturer comparison, which does not make any sense in that context. As if airfrying is ferrari and ofen with a fan is honda?
👌👍
Being smaller also means cleaning the is much easier, specially when you can put the basket and lid bits in the dishwasher.
Cleaning is much easier than the oven? Wut? We just used the baking sheets or whatever, 99% of the time making food in the oven involved zero cleanup for the oven.
You can of course get the same sort of baking sheets for an air fryer but it messes with the airflow. It’s not as good that way, I prefer the cleaning
Same with the electric kettle. I remember being so surprised half the world had been using them for years.
What are you talking about? An oven? An oven cooks like shit compared to an air frier.
I think its the small volume that makes it worth it (faster to heat up, efficient) so I can see why people would buy one.
I personally don’t have one because I don’t exactly value my time. I throw my food in the cold oven and set it to whatever and check back later. I don’t have any motivation what so ever to care about pre heating or having my food ready 10 minutes earlier.
Most countries have ovens
Umluftofen!
affordable housing and healthcare
Best I can give you is corporate pittance for menial labour.
I’ve never tried an air fryer. I don’t have the counter space for one and am concerned I’d eat more unhealthly more often if I owned one but it’s possible that’s not true.
It’s a little more complicated than this, but basically it’s just a smaller, faster convection oven. They’re cool but not lifechanging IMO
I toss sweet potatoes in there for a good snack. Roast veggies. Mostly the air fryer cooks healthy foods fast which is nice.
Nah we cook fish in ours.
Losing weight is easier (less oil) and cooking times are faster.
It’s just a more compressed oven. You can eat healthy or unhealthy with it
Breaded fish or grilled fish?
Can it toast bread?
If you can do it in an oven, chances are you can do it in an air fryer. Just be careful not to burn the outside.
