Air Fryer Advantages and Disadvantages – Airfryer Pros and Cons You Should Know About
In your day-to-day cooking, it is essential to know air fryer advantages and disadvantages. This will come in handy if you are considering buying one.
We are all familiar with deep-fried foods such as French fries because we grew up eating them. However, do you know that there’s another way of preparing your food with less oil? This is possible through the air fryer.
In this piece, we’ll take you through what an air fryer is and its pros and cons.
People all over the world are embracing this cooking appliance. The air fryer ensures your safety while cooking and is a great way to keep off the fat and be healthy. Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and the same applies to air fryers.
You may have to lower your expectations of how crunchy the food should be.
Let’s investigate the pros and cons of an air fryer.
What is an Air Fryer?
You may have heard of an air fryer and you wondered what it was or whether you needed it. An air fryer gives you the same outcome as deep-fried foods while using only hot air and very little oil. If you don’t like dipping your food in oil then this is the perfect kitchen appliance for you.
Your foods will come out tasty, crispy, and golden brown in color just like they would if you fried them.
The air fryer appliance is small and cylindrical. Sometimes the oven is slightly larger and uses a different method of generating heat. Then it is called a turbo convection infrared oven.
The small size of the appliance compacts space and therefore speeds up cooking. The upper part of the air fryer contains a fan and a heating system. It also has a fan that uses convection currents and these currents provide more heat to the food.
When you cook the food inside this fryer, hot air will circulate around it. The hot air will make the food crispy as if it has been deep fried. The food goes inside the basket that comes with the fryer.
The air fryer is easy to clean. The majority of the baskets that accompany the fryer are dishwasher friendly. However, you need to confirm with your manufacturer.
Let’s continue with the exploration of air fryer pros and cons.
Air Fryer Advantages
Here are some of the reasons why you might want to buy an air fryer.
Safe to Use
The process of deep frying foods has some dangers attached to it. Imagine throwing French fries in extremely hot oil. Accidents can occur. For example, the splattering oil could burn you. Also, you can cause a fire that can destroy property or even worse, lead to death.
You don’t have to worry about these unpleasant occurrences when using an air fryer because all the cooking happens inside it. The appliance is locked, and there’s no risk of oil splattering.
You do not have to worry about being exposed to radiation when using an air fryer like you would when using a microwave.
It gets better with air fryers. These kitchen appliances have an auto shutdown. This means that the fryer turns itself off after your food is ready. Therefore, you won’t have burnt food.
It is disappointing that this safe and easy-to-use appliance is banned in most dorms.
Easy to Use
No one wants an appliance that takes them forever to figure out how it works and to use it. The air fryer saves you from this headache because it is straightforward to use.
All you need to do is put your food in the home device, add some little oil, set the time and temperature appropriate for the food you’re preparing, and you are good to go. Your food will cook, the fryer will shut down, and you’ll take out your food and enjoy it.
A tip you can apply is to mix the food up in the middle of cooking to allow it to cook evenly. You don’t need to do anything else. There are some air fryer models that stir the food as it cooks.
Easy to Clean
One of the things you’ll love about the air fryer is that it is easy to clean. Most of its parts are removable. Therefore, you can take them out and clean them. It gets better, these parts are dishwasher-safe.
You’ll, therefore, use less time to wash this home device compared to if it needed to be hand-washed. The fact that the air fryer uses little oil means that you won’t have to scrub it all day long. Just get your warm water and soap and clean it.
You’ll save a lot of time and energy when cleaning an air fryer compared to other cooking appliances.
Takes Up Less Space
You don’t have to worry about where to put your air fryer because it doesn’t require much space. It is smaller compared to the convection oven. You only need around 1 cube foot space for this kitchen device.
When you are done with your fryer, you can safely keep it away and bring it out the next time you want to use it. Majority of people keep their air fryers on the kitchen countertops. This is something you can do if you’re going to enjoy the pleasing view of your fryer.
Efficient and Inexpensive to Operate
Quality cooking oil cost a significant amount of money, mainly if you need vast amounts of it. When using the conventional deep fryer, you’ll need plenty of oil.
You may only use that cooking oil a couple more times before it gets dirty and you throw it away and put in some new oil. This is expensive in the long run.
An air fryer uses a minimal amount of oil, and so you don’t have to keep buying cooking oil. You will need the power to warm up the air fryer, but it will be almost the same units you would use with a countertop convection oven.
Therefore, it makes sense to use an air fryer compared to the other frying kitchen appliances.
Uses Little to No Oil
We know how dangerous too much oil can be to our bodies. The air fryer saves us from complications arising from consuming a lot of oil. When using air fryer, you’ll only use about 20% of the oil you normally use to cook.
Some models do not use any oil at all. This means that you’ll take in less fat and calories which is good news if you’re trying to lose weight or stay healthy. Also, you’ll spend less money on cooking oil.
Makes Low Fat Food with Fewer Calories
If you want to cut your calorie intake and fat consumption, get an air fryer. With this cooking appliance, you’ll use about one tablespoon of oil or less to prepare your food.
You’ll food tasty and crunchy food without adding any calories to your body. That’s the perfect situation.
When you deep fry foods, the food takes in a lot of oil because it has been dipped into the oil. The fact that this doesn’t happen with an air fryer makes it possible to enjoy food with less fat and calories.
Preserves Nutrients
The process of air frying food protects the food from losing too much moisture. The fact that this method uses little oil and there’s the circulation of hot air creates a coating on the food. Therefore, your food will keep most of its nutrients.
If you are preparing your food with the aim of enjoying the nutrients, then an air fryer will help you to do that.
No Oil Smell
Most people don’t like to smell like food. Imagine making delicious French fries at home and then smelling like them as you move around interacting with people.
Your entire home could also be smelling of French fries from the oil used to prepare it. This can happen if you use the normal deep fat fryer. The oil can even splatter around the kitchen increasing the concentration of the cooking smells.
The air fryer ensures you don’t have any smells since all the oil and smells are enclosed within the appliance.
Disadvantages Of Air Fryer
As great as an air fryer is, here are some of its cons that you should know the disadvantages of air fryer before you purchase it.
Not Good for Large Groups
You will have a hard time using the air fryer to prepare food for a large number of people. The appliance has limited cooking capacity and can therefore only accommodate a small amount of food at a time.
If you have a big family or if you get visitors then you’ll be forced to cook in batches. This can be tiresome. Or you can choose an infrared halogen turbo oven with a 12+ quart capacity that can be further expanded. An infrared halogen oven uses a similar cooking method that also involves hot air.
The disadvantage of this is that by the time you finish cooking with an air fryer, the initial batch of food will be cold.
Therefore, this kitchen appliance is suitable for small families that can cook their food in one round.
Can Burn or Dry Out Food
One thing you need to know about air fryers is that it is easy for them to burn or dry out food. The average temperatures at which these fryers cook food is between 300 to 400oF. These are high temperatures and so it’s easy for the food to burn or dry out without close supervision.
Some people prefer to use cooking charts made for air fryers to know the recommended time for making particular dishes. You’ll need to use the fryer for some time to learn how to get your food properly cooked without burning or drying it out.
Also, you need to be in the kitchen to regularly monitor the food to ensure it comes out perfect.
Food Tastes Differently
It is true that air fryers work to give us similar results as deep-fried foods. However, foods prepared by these cooking appliances do not taste like those made through deep frying.
Have you ever noticed that healthier foods as not as tasty as the less healthy ones? That is what happens with air fryers.
An air fryer needs less oil to cook. Therefore, less oil makes food less tasty compared to the ones that are submerged in oil.
Some people who don’t use cooking oil in their air fryers say that the foods come out dry in comparison to those that are deep fried.
Food is not as Crunchy
If you’re expecting your air-fried food to be as crunchy as the deep-fried ones then you will be disappointed. All our lives, we’ve had foods prepared in deep fat fryers and we’ve gotten used to the results.
We, therefore, expect very crispy food which doesn’t happen when we use the air fryer.
Don’t think that adding cooking oil or leaving it in the air fryer for longer will change the results. The food simply will not be very crunchy and that’s something you need to accept if you are using this home appliance.
Longer Cooking Times
You’ll spend more time cooking (about twice or thrice as much time as you would on a deep fryer) when using an air fryer.
The hot air that circulates inside the air fryer is not enough to transfer a significant amount of heat to the food. That’s why food cooks slowly compared to when you put your food in hot cooking oil in a normal deep fryer.
For example, 10 to 20 minutes are enough to prepare French fries in a deep fryer. It takes 20 minutes to do the same in an air fryer.
Can Create Acrylamide
One of the air fryer health disadvantages of using the dry frying method is that it forms acrylamide on the food. This substance is toxic and can cause cancer if consumed in large quantities.
The air fryer uses the dry frying method and so it carries this risk. Look for blackened areas on meat if you’ve prepared it in an air fryer. Those black areas contain acrylamide which you should remove before you consume the meat.
It is Expensive
We all have different definitions of expensive. What is costly to me might be what you consider the normal price. However, we can say that some fryers are very expensive. The high-end ones, to be specific, cost a lot of money.
The average air fryer does not cost that much.
Some people are of the view that buying and owning one is not expensive since you buy it once and you won’t keep wasting cooking oil compared to a deep fryer where you’ll reuse the oil a few times before throwing it away.
At the bottom of this page, you can check out the prices of select air fryer models.
Conclusion
We hope that the air fryer advantages and disadvantages we’ve provided you with have given you a good picture of what to expect when you buy this appliance.
We’ve been used to deep frying foods for decades and now, we have another option which is dry frying.
Sure, the air fryer has some disadvantages such as the fact that the food doesn’t come out as crunchy as we would like it to be. However, if you consider the fact that the food is healthy, and you are safe while cooking it then you might see it as a worthy investment.
All the best as you explore the air fryer.
