Airfryers

[mgr 179]

Good morning all,

 

Does anyone here have an airfryer and would be willing to share their experiences with it? Has it proved a good investment?

I can't digest fat of any kind and this seems to be the answer to crispy food without cooking fat. 

 

There are also so many different brands offering airfryers, a brand recommendation would also be appreciated.

 

Here's hoping the warm weather holds a little longer...

 

[MikeMelga 7,312]

We use our Philips probably 5x per week. You can't go wrong with Philips.

Be aware that it is not 100% fat free. For example those frozen fries usually come with a tiny coat of oil.

But yeah, you can cook a lot of stuff fat free.

It's also very fast and much more economical than using the oven.

It's easy to clean and use.

Except for the fries, we use it for the quick&dirty meals.

 

We use it mainly for:

• fishsticks
• rissoles
• sausages, if we're in a hurry
• frozen pretzels :/
• frozen fries. They taste different, but also "taste" more healthy

 

We also use a Thermomix a lot, and you can steam cook with it. We use it for steam coocking vegetables, salmon, Korean Mandu and others. But a Thermomix (Bimby for the Portuguese out there!) is much more expensive, although personally the Thermomix is the best kitchen investment we've ever made! Portable, lasts a life time, we use it probably 12x per week!

 

EDIT: Thermomix running great for 9 years, Air Fryer from Philips running great for 4 years.

[scook17 281]

15 minutes ago, MikeMelga said:

We also use a Thermomix a lot, and you can steam cook with it. We use it for steam coocking vegetables, salmon, Korean Mandu and others. But a Thermomix (Bimby for the Portuguese out there!) is much more expensive, although personally the Thermomix is the best kitchen investment we've ever made! Portable, lasts a life time, we use it probably 12x per week!

 

Interesting product. Add a mixer to automatically stir the food whilst it cooks in a pot. 1000w, so not too much power usage.

 

One alternative I like is the 'Instant Pot' which is basically a pressure cooker, which makes for great stews/soups. Food stays hot for a long time after cooking if closed. Has a timer function, so you can slow cook for many hours. Mine uses 2200w, during the heating phase, but this is at the beginning, and afterwards, it hardly heats again as it seems to keep the heat in. Certainly much better than the electric oven for casseroles etc.

Also a streamer is also a must. Mainly because it has a timer, so you can make boiled eggs just right. Nice also for veggies and rice or anything you might boil.

[MikeMelga 7,312]

Go to any fancy restaurant, or even many non fancy ones, and you will see a wall with Thermomix. They are built like a tank and incredibly versatile.

 

I've been to a restaurant's kitchen which had 10 (!) lined up in a wall, all being used!

 

We use it for soups, sauces, steam cooking, egg cooking, ice creams, crush ice, caipirinha and other drinks, many cakes and kiche. In case of cakes, kiche and others, the preparation is done with Thermomix, then it is poured in a glass container and goes to the oven.

It is a mixer, grinder, scale, timer, cooker, steamer and contains "recipes", that allow easy on-screen following.

[knotheadusc 521]

We have one.  My husband uses it occasionally to cook things like fries or similar snacks.  He's also used it to make brownies to surprising success.  The only hitch we have experienced is that one of our dogs gets disoriented when we use it near him.  I did some reading on dogs and air fryers and read that in some dogs, it causes an inner ear disturbance that can, to them, make it seem like they're in a very loud environment.  Our dog was acting weird for about an hour after we used the fryer near him, so my husband uses it in our basement, where it won't bother the dog.

 

Our is also a Philips.  

 

We also like our Instant Pot, although we don't use it as often as we should.

 

[yesterday 2,022]

You can look further here

 

What kind of cooking oil do you use? - Page 4 - Cooking - Toytown Germany

 

from page 4 on wards

[mgr 179]

Hi again,

 

Thanks everyone for the infos. Pretty convincing stuff, it's probably worthwhile for me.

 

I must say, I had no idea the the Munich members were so active. I only ever read the Berlin and Hamburg postings and so I thought Toytown was slowly losing custom - or whatever happens to a forum.

 

Anyway, thanks for your input. I shall now check out what airfryers are on offer in this neck of the woods.

 

Bye everyone and thanks again.

 

[syedalisajjad 66]

Check the one from Cosori. A few days back it was offered on Amazon for 100 EUR i guess
 

COSORI Heißluftfritteuse 5,5L XXL Friteuse Heissluft Fritteusen Air Fryer mit 100 Rezeptbuch auf Deutsch, Digitalem LED-Touchscreen, 11 Programmen, Vorheizen&Warmhalten, Shake-Modus, ohne Öl, 1700W https://amzn.eu/d/fZvLW5j

[fraufruit 42,165]

I know many people who bought air fryers. I would say that half like and use them and the other half don't - including my son.

 

I wouldn't put a lot of money in one to start with.

[silty1 3,613]

8 minutes ago, fraufruit said:

I wouldn't put a lot of money in one to start with.

 

Bills and coins are better deep-fried anyway

[fraufruit 42,165]

Too shay!

[yourkeau 7,721]

13 hours ago, mgr said:

Has it proved a good investment?

I invested zero (it was a gift), so, definitely, yes. 

 

13 hours ago, mgr said:

I can't digest fat of any kind and this seems to be the answer to crispy food without cooking fat. 

Well, then it does the job. Even though I do add some oil to my Schnitzels, without it it is less tasty. 

 

My wife loves to cook falafel in air fryer, it it is pretty good. Not as tasty as deep-friedIt one, but definitely more healthy. 

 

It also consumes a lot less energy than the oven, but the price is you can only cook stuff for 2 people maximum. 

 

 

[kiplette 8,712]

We have one of the mixed function machines - a Ninja. We use it for everything. The oven is now a cupboard and the Ninja lives on a board on the hob. My daughter has one, and they use it all the time and my friend who is a home economics teacher got one about 2 months ago and is similarly addicted.

 

I have gone off single use machines a bit given that these multi machines do things so well.

 

If you want to airfry lots of stuff in one, check the machine you have in mind has sufficient capacity.

[Tap 8,460]

I have an airfryer and I love it.  Most foods that you cook in an oven, can also be cooked in an airfryer, you just need a bit of confidence to try it.  It's great for fish and meat, and falafal which I do quite often.  Also vegetables, I make my own fries, with real potatoes, and they come out so very good.  What I did buy is a little spray bottle for oil as I like the flavour, but you don't actually need it.

 

Last weekend, I tried baking.  I made some fruit scones in it and they came out really well.  I had the opportunity to borrow one for a couple of weeks to try out and have now ordered my own.

[slammer 888]

I got a cheapo from MediaMarkt for 40 Euros, had it for a year now and love it. Not for everything, don´t put a Camembert in it for instance as it will become a permanent fixture, But poultry, potatoes, mushrooms, corn,  Cevapcici, Sausages, Bacon... Oh lord perfect bacon. Have me a lot of fun chucking stuff in and seeing what comes out.

 

[dstanners 1,539]

13 hours ago, kiplette said:

We use it for everything. The oven is now a cupboard and the Ninja lives on a board on the hob.

I like the idea that one of these could replace an oven entirely, but some of the comments on the thread suggest that it may be suitable for smaller meals or for a couple only. I've taken a look online (like the Ninja Max XL and Ninja Speedy) but they refer to the capacity in quarts, which I can see is roughly a litre. However, it is hard to think of many meals in purely liquid terms. Would that be big enough for a roast dinner for a family of four for example? I'm struggling to think how something that small could allow for a tray of roast potatoes, large roasting joint, yorkshire puddings etc, or is it so fast you could make each part one after the other? How about baking a decent-sized loaf of bread?

 

 

[mgr 179]

Gosh, thanks, everyone. I'm now wondering why I didn't do this ages ago!

Everybody's pleased with theirs - well apart from Frau Fruit's son.

FF perhaps you could describe the negatives to complete the picture.

I'm pretty sure it's the answer to my crispy food cravings - at long last, hurrah!

[fraufruit 42,165]

I asked him. Hoping for a reply.

[HEM 11,160]

Our son had been raving about his air fryer for some time but we resisted, having been put off by stories about "noise" and "lots of hot air".

 

Then it became impossible to buy these large blocks of cooking fat for our deep fryer so we succumbed & bought a Phillips fryer from Amazon.

 

We really like it.  Makes far less noise than the deep fyer & there are no clouds of steam.  Great for many things - for example "curly fries"

come out perfect whilst in deep fryer the fat has to be changed afterwards.  Its also good for warming things - we recently bought 3

hefty slices of quiche - wife was about to warm them in oven when I suggested the air fryer.  Did the job excellently without needing

to warm the oven first - probably saves energy.

 

Since then the deep fyer has been cleaned & relegated to the cellar (we won't throw it out just yet).

 

[kiplette 8,712]

4 hours ago, dstanners said:

Would that be big enough for a roast dinner for a family of four for example?

 

I mostly make nursery-type food, and so it's fine - a shepherd's pie, big lot of pasta, stew etc. We range from 3-6 people and we eat lots. Capacity has been ample.

 

I don't do much meat and two veg type of cooking, and when I do, I still tend to one-pot it. Lazy-arse, less washing-up.

 

Last Christmas I was still using the gas oven (I was nervous of the Ninja and it sat from November on the kitchen counter until at least January until kid#4 and I conquered it together ), and I think that would be a huge struggle to Ninge. You can divide up the space inside in various ways, but for a proper roast with complex parts, I don't think one Ninja-type appliance would do the job. I guess I'll be clearing the crap out of the oven to use it at Christmas  

 

Baking is good, not as fast as I expected but still a smaller space being heated. The shape is a thing - large round loaf, yes, large long brick loaf, no, it won't fit the length. 

 

If you look at the Salted Pepper on google, FB, youtube etc. Louise Long has a very comprehensive set of instructions for different appliances including cooking grownup food with separate bits cooked together in the one machine (she calls it 360 meals), so for your specific questions, it would be worth doing a bit of research to see what she/people think is possible in one of these multicookers. TBF if you are a big roast fan once or twice a week and using the machine for other stuff the rest of the time it would still be worth having.