How I learnt to love my air fryer

It has become clear that the air fryer is here to stay, and that the Luddites (I very nearly was one) who are trying to see them off like garlic-toting Van Helsings in deadly battle with Count Dracula are fighting a pointless cause.

I’d go as far as to say that their rise will soon be accompanied by the gradual demise of the microwave oven, or at least that the latter will become less ubiquitous.

I only wish that they’d never been dubbed “air fryers” because that is not what they really are. Some of my best friends in the food world remain deeply sceptical of these controversial little ovens, with some vowing that the air-spewing beast will never (dis)grace their countertops. Even respected food columnists at the top of their games are fond of poking fun at them, some predicting their early demise. They use phrases like “the air fryer brigade” for those who aren’t of the view that they’re lousy appliances, and are convinced that air fryers are the domain of snowflakes and trendoids. 

One admitted sceptic, later a convert, wrote: “I had resisted buying an air fryer precisely because too many friends had gushed about them with obnoxious enthusiasm.” I get that. It was very off-putting for me too. 

So I’ll endeavour not to be obnoxiously gushing about the machine that I somewhat coyly permitted to enter my kitchen late in 2o22. I had glared at it for a day or two, stopping short of instructing it to shut up and behave, but curiosity got the better of me and I finally started browsing air fryer tips, hints, foibles, tricks, recipes and whatnot. I read the manual, examined the machine’s component parts, and read air fryer fan mail. There’s a lot of that.

Then I cooked air fryer courgettes.

Oy vey. You don’t want to know. They were awful. I glowered at the machine for two days, threatening darkly to ask Takealot to Takeitback, then put some potatoes in to roast. The Foodie’s Wife, who is less demanding than The Foodie, pronounced them excellent. But for me, they lacked that lovely crispy-hard, crunchy exterior and the innards were just not fluffy enough. I gave the beast a good talking-to and put it on the naughty step for three days.

Then I started to think. What if it is not an air fryer at all. What if it is just, like any other kitchen device or gadget, a piece of equipment that the cook needs to use just like all the others, applying your skills, knowledge and nous.

Nifty and thrifty

I resolved to treat it as if it were just another oven. And that is what it is. An air fryer is just a miniature convection oven that you put on a countertop. It’s nifty and thrifty. You use far less fat, so you save money. It cooks everything quicker, so you save on electricity (though it’s no good during rolling blackouts if you’re not set up for solar, so my gas oven remains important to me). 

What you’re cooking in the air fryer needs attention, much more so than, say, a slow cooker, that device I have never grown to appreciate, but which The Foodie’s Wife regards as a very fine and useful appliance. “Let’s use the slow cooker today,” is always met with studious silence. Yes, let’s; let’s just bung everything in a big pot, put a lid on, and cook it overnight. Yum.

But I wanted to be a grownup about the recalcitrant air fryer, to give it a chance to redeem itself. I glared at some potatoes, then cast a withering look at the air fryer. Let’s give these another shot, I said, dubiously, and let’s see if you can get it right this time. And I decided to just cook them in the way that made sense, rather than listen to the air fryer brigade’s ubiquitous advice just to spray the inside of the basket with cooking oil spray and that’s that. Well, it’s not good enough. Potatoes need fat, not a mere whiff sprayed in their general direction.

So I put some canola oil in a bowl, and added black pepper and salt. I peeled potatoes, put them in the bowl, and tossed them around in it so that every part of each potato was well coated. Then I cooked them in the air fryer. A hundred times better. Just by changing a simple technique.

Next, I went a step further. I sliced through potatoes on one side to make hasselbacks, and tossed them, not in oil, but in melted butter with thyme leaves, salt and pepper. They’re the best hasselback potatoes I’ve ever cooked.

Since then, I’ve roasted chickens, made chips several times, roasted cauliflower, cooked a slab of pork belly, fried frozen fish and more, all with excellent results.

Suffice it to say that those with their heads buried in the sand with regard to air fryers need to pull themselves together and try to see these creatures with fresh eyes, as I did. They will be rewarded.

They don’t cook everything, of course. When the machine is turned on, very hot air blows around inside it violently, so you can’t put tiny things in it that will float around and risk the element catching fire. You can use foil in it, to cover, say, a piece of meat that you don’t want to burn, or the top of a cake that you’re baking.

The cook really does have control

And, contrary to what the sceptics will tell you, the cook does have control of what is cooking. You can pause at any time, take a basket out to check the contents, turn something over, give it a shake, and so on, then close the drawer and unpause. Just like watching a movie on TV, when you need to make coffee. I sometimes add a baste halfway through the cook. 

You can’t make soup in it, or a sauce, because liquids will fly and float in balls and droplets and there will be an awful mess. But you wouldn’t make soup or a sauce in a regular oven either. Cake batter works well, though, because it has sufficient body to allow gravity to keep it down.

The elements of air fryers are very close to what’s cooking below, so you have to consider this when putting something in it. It is designed to brown the top of what is cooking, which means you can make toasted sandwiches in it, and bake pies. In fact, they’re ideal for pies as you’re likely to have a beautiful crunchy brown crust. The same applies to loaves of bread, cakes and muffins.

We can be pretty sure that it won’t be long before many self-catering places come with an air fryer. They’re well on track to be as ubiquitous a part of every kitchen as a toaster and a microwave oven. I’m already using my air fryer much more than I’ve ever used a microwave, although I confess that I still see those as defrosting and warming-up devices. To this extent, microwaves may be on track to become less ubiquitous than they have been, once people work out that, yes, you can defrost and warm up in an air fryer too. So the microwave’s days are numbered. Ten years from now, it will be interesting to compare their relative numbers. I think it likely that, when the current microwave dies (and we all know they do become defunct), we’ll look at the air fryer and think, nah, that will do. And turf it out.

Having said that, I do wonder what the life expectancy of air fryers will turn out to be. We’ll have to wait and see. But I do know this: when the current one bites the dust, I’ll buy a new one. DM/TGIFood