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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”
Deep fat fryers are fairly easy to use though. Also quite quick. They don't need cleaning with every use (maybe every 5 or 6 uses). What they aren't good for is having a clean kitchen. Creates steam, oil splatter, and they smell when in use. Can be a complete bitch to clean too, especially depending on the design. Even the easy to clean ones eat soap as the waste and dirt is oil saturated.
If your gonna list the pros of a deep fryer, list the main con- smells like grease all the time
There would probably also be some health complications if you deep fry half as much food as I air fry/toaster oven.
My god, I'd be huger than I am now
I said they smell when in use. If you're not using it it has a lid on, so you don't really smell it. Unless you just don't put the lid on...
I meant they smell when not in use, lid or not 🤷♂️
You either have a very sensitive nose or your doing something wrong.
Definitely #1, but I also wouldn't completely rule out #2 🤔
Agreed on all of these points.
The major difference in effort is to carry the smelly deepfryer to the garage because no way would we keep that on the counter top and cramped storage tiny kitchen.
While the air fryer has can easily live on the counter's top especially with all the extra stuff it can do. (The Easiest soft Boiled eggs ftw) we keep it right next to the equally life saving expansive rice coocker. Workspace is a plank on the stove, who needs pans and pots? (Exaggeration)
Ok I love my air fryer but I do not understand the love for rice cookers. It’s just so easy to cook rice already. The hard and annoying part is washing the rice
The difference is the cooker consistently makes better rice then anyone i know, we imported it from Asia and holy fuck have they perfected the science of rice cooking.
But does it pilaf? I like to toast my rice in a seasoned oil a little bit before cooking it. Ideally with spices similar to what are in the curry or beans going with it
If you actually cared about space you wouldn't have an air fryer and a rice cooker. You would use a convection oven and a pan respectively. Also how is it any easier to do boiled eggs? Surely the hardest part is peeling it. Rice cookers I can see being useful because they avoid cleaning pans with rice stuck to the bottom all the time.
Each their own executive dysfunction i guess,
I do care a lot about space but i cant hold a job and cook a semi healthy meal everyday. So i barely used the space and just ate junk food and takeaway. Sacrificing the space for these devices means a decent meal can be optained with no more then 5 min of prep and wasting for a “ding”, no concentration required.
On some days just dealing with finding the right pan or pot and remembering that oh shit i have sm on the fire is believe it or not a challenge for me personally.
For boilder eggs i just trow em in the air fryer for 6min and there consistently perfect.
Once their on my plate most of my personal executive dysfunction disappears, i never struggled opening eggs up.
I am a bit lost on what you can do with one that an oven can't. I get they are slightly faster and more energy efficient, but functionally I thought they were basically the same. What am I missing?
Technical abilities aren't all that different towards an oven but convenience is at least compared to my conventional oven
Airfryers are alot quicker. modern models dont even require preheating so there is much less need to plan ahead.
The results is also much crispier (from trying to simulate a fryer) so some stuff intended for oven actually tastes better from an airfryer, i find more and more boxes of fried stuff like chicken nuggets that are intended for air fryers that ovens used to struggle with. (At least subjective tastewise) there is one exception which is pizza, i am rather peculiar in how i like my pizza. Reheating a slice does work but conventional oven absolutely wins the pizza game.
Its somewhat easier to clean and maintain, most parts fit in the dishwasher, may vary by model.
bonus is energy efficiency but admittedly the real major reason i and my household love it is the super low bar of a quick easy meal where before we defaulted much more to junk. It made a measurable positive difference to our diet without to much conscious effort.
Yes, it's good to cook rice in a, [checks notes], pan.
Are you saying you have never cooked rice in a pan?
I've fried already-cooked rice in a pan, but when I cook rice it's in a pot. Have you cooked rice in a pan?
Are you an American or something? A pot is just a subtype of pan to me. Does pan only mean frying pan where you live?
Edit: okay I am stretching slightly here. A pot can also be a container that you don't cook with, and that wouldn't be a pan. Anything that can go on a hob is a pan.
I live in Canada, where a pan is shallow and has 1 long handle and a pot is deep and typically has 2 small handles. A pot isn't a pan, although you can get crossovers like a saucepan which is typically deep like a pot but has a single long handle like a pan. If it's not shallow it isn't a pan. Pans can include frying pans, skillets, saute pans, even a wok would be considered a pan. Pans are for cooking at high heat. Pots are for boiling things or for preparing something that's mostly liquid: soups, stews, sauces, etc. You can also have roasting pans or cake pans for use in the oven, but once again, the key thing is they have shallow sides compared to the bottom.
To me, a pot being a subtype of pan is like saying a knife is just a subtype of spoon. They're completely different things.
Yeah I am English. I would never call a cake tin a cake pan. Same with a roasting tray is never called a roasting pan. For it to be a pan it has to go on a hob. Even the way you describe things like a sauce pan seems contradictory, by your definition it should be a pot rather than a pan. It's interesting to note what local differences exist in the use of language.
You definitely can do high heat cooking in a pot. Most of them are stainless steel or cast iron after all, the material doesn't care.
Edit: forgot to mention that you can also have oven trays, which are flatter than a roasting tray. Roasting tray would be for say roasting potatoes or meat with sauce, and a tray would be for pizza or flatbread or chips.
When my mom had a deep fryer, she made us put the used oil back in a bottle and clean the fryer after every use. She just went back to using a pot after few times because it was less hassle.
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.
The only time I used an air fryer was when my appliances got destroyed during height of covid. I ordered new ones right away and had to change my order after 5 months because none of them had arrived or had a possible date. I borrowed an air fryer to get me by. I ate a lot of pizza rolls.