Air Fryers Are Simpler Than You Think, But Still Pretty Neat

[00:00] a series of videos for the month of November where... no effort is made. Now, today, we are going be talking about air fryers.

[00:18] Today, we’re gonna be talking about air fryers. I doubt you’ve heard of them, they seem really new to the market, but it’s a hot topic! air fryer is a meaningless term and none  of these devices are doing anything new at all.

[00:35] It’s a convection oven with a basket. No really, that’s it. but if you happen to have a convection oven you already have an air fryer!

[00:53] In fact, many appliance manufacturers have started taking their existing convection oven models and slapping an “air fryer” sticker on them so you’ll be more likely to buy them! But really all they did was make the  “convect” button say “air fry” and call that a new product.

[01:11] Cynicism levels are a little elevated today, I’m afraid. So firstly, what is a convection oven? As you already know, an oven is simply a box with electric heating elements or a gas burner inside of it.

[01:29] Those heat producing devices heat the air inside the box to your desired temperature after which you of in the cold food to bake it. and eventually you can of out hot eat the food!

[01:44] But during the baking process, the cold food absorbs heat energy from the hot air surrounding it, which cools that air down. That cooler air right next to the food forms something of an  insulating layer which slows the baking process.

[02:00] Stick a fan at the back of the oven, though,  and you can force the air inside the box to move around just like when you stick a fan in a room and it moves the air around. This prevents that cold layer of air from staying next to the food since, well, the fan is constantly pushing it somewhere else and replacing it with hot hot air.

[02:20] This speeds the cooking process up a fair bit, and tends to increase the crispiness of whatever it is you are baking in there.   Back when I was kid, convection ovens were  "oooh fancy" but now it’s a pretty close to standard feature.

[02:35] All but very entry-level models offer a convection fan these days. This here air fryer... well, it’s more or less the same exact thing. Take the basket out and look up in there and you’ll find a heating element and a fan!

[02:51] I’d bet good money that heating element is the same part in a stovetop somewhere. This simple one - it has just two control knobs:

[03:03] one for the temperature,  which maxes out at 400 degrees and calls out 360 degrees for some reason, That time knob is the same mechanical clockwork timer you find in practically any toaster oven and it functions as the power switch, too.

[03:21] When switched on the fan motor is energized which  spins it up and blows air down through the heating element. And of course the heating element (1,100 watts in this case) is also energized so it starts getting real hot.

[03:35] That means the machine is forcing hot air down at the food in the basket. And the basket is designed with a false floor filled with holes, allowing air to flow beneath the food and heat everything quite evenly.

[03:51] The temperature dial controls a thermostat which will cycle the heating element on and off to maintain a desired air temperature, And that fan doesn’t just blow air down through the heating element and at the food in the basket,

[04:06] but it also blows air out the back of the machine through this exhaust port. The gap around the top forms an air intake, and that keeps the fan motor, control wiring, and plastic body of this thing from overheating and/or melting.

[04:22] Now, while this is really just a few common toaster oven slash stovetop parts rearranged to make a new product there are some advantages to this.

[04:34] Because it’s so small, the device preheats extremely quickly and the fan is quite forceful, making for one real intense storm of heat in there.

[04:49] it’s just a modified convection oven for use on the countertop. It’s not a new cooking process, and it’s not really frying anything, it’s just a small, high-speed convection oven.

[05:04] Oh but remember how I said air fryer is  a meaningless term which doesn’t mean anything because it’s meaningless? Look, it says air fry!

[05:16] Now, those of you who know what a toaster oven looks like might be thinking this looks an awful lot like a toaster oven and yep! But it’s got a great big fan at the top of the oven and it came with this here basket which you can put foods in to air fry just like these doodads do.

[05:32] Except this is bad at that - but we’ll circle back to that point. This toaster oven, unsurprisingly, is full of toaster oven parts including the same clockwork timer switch and temperature dial,

[05:48] but there’s also a function dial and a few more heating elements in play. This uses rod-style heating elements and there are six in total, Part of the function dial’s job is to change which heating elements are in use:

[06:06] in bake mode, the two on the bottom join two on the top so the oven heats like a normal oven. But in air fry mode, the lower elements are switched off and instead all four at the top are used

[06:19] with the fan blowing air down through them at the food just like in the standard air fryer. Oh look, it’s another toaster oven which claims to offer air frying.

[06:33] and the air fry feature is turned on by setting the thermostat to the highest temperature and clicking past a detent to the air fry setting.

[06:45] That means this oven only offers air frying at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and since the fan is really kind of weak and it doesn’t actually blow that forcefully on anything, But it’s a much better oven.

[07:00] Again, we’ll circle back to that, but I do want to point out that this product is almost certainly just a small countertop convection oven (I’ve seen similar things long before air frying was a fad)

[07:12] which has had the controls altered a bit and the convection mode labeled “air fry” - Oh look, it’s another air fryer but this one is green.

[07:25] Yeah okay this one belongs to my parents and I decided to throw it in  for a head-to-head test with my cheapskate Walmart air fryer and my convection oven. That’s right, I made a lot of French fries so I could tell you  just how good these air frying appliances are.

[07:43] Jump cut! Guess what folks, it finally happened! I did a memory card reformat before I offloaded the footage so you’re not gonna get any B-roll of all the tests I’m about to talk about.

[07:58] I don’t think you’re missing too much, it was mostly just static shots of cooking happening then a close-up of the finished fries, but it did show my methodology which  now you’re just gonna have to take my word for.

[08:11] But, I could not have asked for a more perfect accident  to start out 2024’s No Effort November. I weighed out about 150 grams of the  same frozen fries for each of the tests,

[08:25] and I tried to form them into a similar lump in each device to make as close to a head-to-head comparison as I could with minimal effort. For the two air fryers which aren’t trying to do anything other than air fry,

[08:38] I set them both to 400 degrees (the maximum temp of the cheap one) and, without preheating, had them air fry the fries for 20 minutes. And they came out essentially perfectly!

[08:53] They were the exact kind of crispy that I like - they hadn’t lost all their moisture and burnt, but they weren’t anywhere close to soggy. And turning frozen fries to done fries in 20 minutes is actually quite impressive, especially considering I did not bother to preheat either of these air fryers.

[09:13] Most of the ovens on sale that claim to air fry come with a basket and tray like this, so I bought a basket and tray like this to turn my convection oven into an air fryer.

[09:29] Now, this is a full-sized convection oven and it’s going to take a while to pre-heat, so for this test I let it preheat to 400 degrees  (which took about 12 minutes) before I put the fries in. Then I put them in for 20 minutes and guess what?

[09:46] They were quite soggy. So I stuck them back in for another 10 minutes and guess what? But considering that I had now spent some 42 minutes making these fries, it’s clear that my convection oven is not a good air fryer.

[10:03] On that note, this oven for reasons I do not understand will not run the convection fan continuously when it's in convection mode. It turns it on and off and only runs the fan about half the time which is very annoying and I’m sure is slowing it down.

[10:22] So while my oven is not a good air fryer, yours might be just fine. So if you don’t already have an air fryer but you do have a convection oven and you don’t want to dedicate counter space to yet another small kitchen appliance,

[10:36] Well, you might consider ordering one of these air fryer baskets. However, if you do have the space for another small kitchen appliance... But first, what about the toaster ovens?

[10:52] Well, for these I went back to air frying without preheating. They’re claiming to be something special so I treated them specially. The Hamilton Beach machine allows you to set any temperature

[11:05] so I did the same 400 degrees,  and I put in the fries with the oven cold then ran it for 20 minutes. And those fries came out… almost exactly like the other two air fryers.

[11:17] They were not quite as crispy but they were quite satisfactory and another 2 maybe 3 minutes would have produced identical results. So this thing is actually a good air fryer.

[11:30] The Black & Decker model got the same treatment, but its temperature couldn’t be set to anything other than 450 degrees. Also, it uses the same heating element arrangement for baking as it does for air frying,

[11:43] so about half of the heat is coming from below the food rather than all of it being blown down from above. and I had a drip tray below the basket which was shielding the fries from the heat

[11:57] but anyway after 20 minutes the fries were… They were acceptable but not as crispy as I would have liked, which shows this is not that great of an air fryer

[12:12] especially since, once warmed up, it was 450 degrees in there rather than 400. Despite that, it would have needed another 5 minutes at least to get the fries where I wanted them.

[12:25] The Hamilton Beach machine, while it does do a good job air frying, sucks at being a normal oven. I love toaster ovens and I have had one on my countertop essentially forever  because I much prefer using them when I need to bake a small quantity of food.

[12:46] They preheat faster than a full-size oven and they don’t make the kitchen nearly as hot which is especially nice in the summer months. Though I think they suck for making toast and question anyone who thinks toast out of a toaster oven is better than toast out of a toaster -

[13:02] toaster ovens dry out bread much much more than a toaster does so even if I didn’t have the best toaster ever, I mean even the $10 plastic Walmart toasters of the world make nicer toast to my taste than any toaster oven I have ever encountered.

[13:20] Anyway, that wasn’t the point, the point was this guy is a bad oven. And the reason is that it does not turn off the air fry fan when in bake mode. The fan is a two-speed fan and it slows down in bake mode

[13:35] but it doesn’t turn off and that means there is no functional difference between the bake mode and the convection bake mode. I wasn’t in the room where it happened so I can’t say for sure but just like the standard air fryers

[13:53] that fan also serves to cool the fan motor and wiring since it’s directly above a box which can have 450 degree air inside. I believe that fan has to run whenever the machine is on.

[14:07] This means you cannot use this device as a regular oven without making significant adjustments. When I first used it I burnt the Brussels sprouts I was roasting to a crisp despite following the same procedure I have always done for Brussels sprouts.

[14:23] And it’s not the thermostat - I used an oven thermometer to verify and the temperature dial is close to spot on. It’s the fan - this thing is always quite a forceful convection oven,

[14:35] and I found myself constantly lowering the temperature by at least 50 degrees to get similar results to what I was used to. I eventually got tired of this, and that’s why  I ended up buying the Black & Decker machine.

[14:49] This guy is not great at being an air fryer,  but you can use it like any ordinary oven without thinking. And its pseudo-air-fry mode does come in handy for some things - including roasting Brussels sprouts.

[15:02] But I think of this as a conventional oven with a single convection setting and not an air fryer. These two machines have revealed to me that combining the functions of a toaster oven and an air fryer presents an insurmountable design compromise

[15:18] and has turned me against suggesting one of these over a “regular” air fryer. And that’s before we even get into the ergonomic benefits of an air fryer. it's quite a lot easier to deal with because you don’t need a towel or potholder or ‘Ove’ Glove to take a hot wire basket out of a hot oven.

[15:40] You can simply grab that handle and dump the contents onto a plate or serving bowl. That doesn’t work for all foods, and it’s not like the air fryer replaces an oven, but for the foods where it does work that’s a neat trick.

[15:55] And an even neater trick is that some air fryers (even this really cheap one) have baskets which are dishwasher safe and that makes cleanup effortless. So, believe it or not, I think these are more than just a fad and having one in your life (if you don’t already) is probably worth it.

[16:15] They’re cheap enough now that quite honestly if you’ve been wanting to try one you should go for it. But personally, I would stick to simple ones. I like this fancier version for having a window and a light which lets you peek into the basket while things are cooking

[16:33] (though… that light is an unshielded halogen capsule sitting above oily food which feels like a design flaw) but the control situation is overly complicated. put it in the right mode,

[16:47] then press buttons again to set the right time. These two knobs win me over, and the dumb controls are much less likely to be a problem in the future

[17:00] than the electronics in here such as the power supply, microprocessor, touch panel, and relays which you know were cost cut as much as possible. And I don’t even know how all these modes are supposed to do anything different.

[17:14] I figure all these modes might be able to do is fake you out as far as the temperature set point vs. the actual temperature.

[17:26] Like, just how I had to set the temperature down by at least 50 degrees to get the Hamilton Beach toaster oven to behave like I expect an oven to behave, I think it’s likely these modes are just tinkering with the set points to make the same 400 degree setting produce different results in those different modes.

[17:44] And personally I don’t like machines which do that sort of fuzzy math on my behalf. And that’s the end of the video.

[17:56] I’ll be honest, I was a huge curmudgeon about these things because I knew what they were. The same basic parts of a toaster oven just rearranged and then with a fan and a basket.

[18:09] And it really annoyed me that we decided to call these “air fryers” as if there’s a connection between baking and frying. But, just as Taco Bell sometimes manages to come up with a Crunchwrap Supreme,

[18:24] new ideas from the parts bin of life can actually be pretty useful. Kay bye. ♫ crispy smooth jazz ♫

[18:37] ...air fryer sticker on them so your’ll be more -eh beh beh bah. That cooler air next to the food forms something  of an insulating layer which slows the payk-- oof.

[18:50] This simple one has just two control knobs, one  for the temperature and one for the time. And if you don’t already have an air fryer but you do have a convection oven and you don’t want to dedicate counter space to yet another small kitchen appliance,

[19:07] [confused] [laughs] [coughing fit]

[19:20] well… if you think i can bother to put a captions gag here, ya forgot what month it is.