Alps look ok!

I got rid of my home deep fryer for health reasons. It is dangerously easy, cheap, and quick to make quality fries...

They're closer to impingement ovens than convection ovens.

Convection ovens (or "fan forced ovens" in some countries) use a fan to gently and evenly circulate the hot air, whereas impingement ovens and air fryers use higher pressure fans to blow the heat directly onto the food.

Things don't need to be revolutionary to be life changing. Could I have used the convection oven for this one slice of pizza? Sure. Would I ever? Hell no.

But yeah, microwaves really are neat. We're going to fling these electrons around in these very specific magnetic fields and out pops light you can't see.

Microwaves are a prime example that if something's cool doesn't mean it's good for it's job.

Btw, the part of microwave that turns electricity into microwave is called magnetron. Freaking magnetron. I didn't know real inventions could have names as cool as that.

I almost never use my microwave or oven because of the air frier.

Microwaves are cool in theory but in practice the food is almost always soggy and mushy. Maybe I just don’t know how to use them, but I’m rarely happy with the result. Even reheating leftovers, I’d rather do in a saucepan

Microwaves are cool, sure, but they have a completely different utility. If I want a small amount of food hot, it goes in the microwave. If I want a small amount of food crispy, it goes in the air fryer. If I want a large amount of food hot or crispy it goes in the oven, with convection on or off depending on the end goal.

When talking about air fryers, my husband once rightly pointed out that air fryers are just countertop convection ovens.

I walked over to him, held my index finger up to his lips, and whispered to him, "shhh. Air fryer. AIR FRYER." 🤣

Yes. And I think it’s important to understand exactly what a convection oven actually is.

At its most basic, it’s an oven with a heating element and a fan that circulates hot air around the cooking chamber. That’s it. The circulating air improves heat transfer and helps food cook and brown more evenly.

Now, manufacturers have increasingly started calling a particular implementation of convection an “air fryer” and charging a premium for it, as though they’ve invented an entirely new cooking technology. They haven’t. Convection cooking has been around for decades.

An air fryer is essentially a compact, highly optimized convection oven: hot air is circulated rapidly around the food, usually with a basket or perforated tray that allows that air to contact more of the food's surface.

So when you’re shopping for a range and you see one advertised as having an “Air Fry” function, don’t automatically assume you’re getting some revolutionary new appliance. In many cases, you’re paying extra for a marketing term applied to a convection system that has existed for generations.

Air fryers, and to a lesser extent fan ovens, use a fan to move the air rather than just using air convection currents.

To put it in perspective, that's just over 100 years out of 4.5 billion the earth has existed. Or 300 million years or so complex life existed (that mostly wouldn't be able to fathom the core concepts you'd need to know to even understand what having an air fryer means, where I'd consider "figured out that forest fires can contain more delicious food in some places (where intensity is high enough to cook plants and animals but not enough to turn them to charcoal)" to be pretty smart). Or several million that hominids have existed and using stone or better tools. Or several thousand since we figured out how to manage our food production rather than depend on always finding it. Or several hundred since we got much better at harnessing energy.

Also, I'd push back on a) the invention date being more relevant than the mass release date, and b) early convection ovens counting as "air fryers", so that 100 years should probably also be reduced.

Best I can give you is corporate pittance for menial labour.

We probably did in old Mesopotamia with clay ovens or something.

I hope that's real brick behind that. I've seen some pretty gnarly damage from people using their BBQs too close to the side of the house.

I hate that I ever, or will ever, eat food that didn't involve this. What is it?

They are good for quick small batch stuff, but way less efficient than modern fan oven for anything bigger. Once you run for long enough to mitigate heating the ovens larger thermal mass, oven always wins.

Oven still gets the last laugh when you learn what air fryers are

As I understand microwaves, they are essentially powered by magical runes we trap inside.

Right? People find one cool thing about an Era and think Jim crow is acceptable

Just hold your chicken leg out the window for a few seconds.

Most toaster ovens, even ones with strong convection for "air frying", are not quite consistent enough in their heating. You have to pay far more than you would for an air fryer to get even heat coil distribution and a good door seal for that. The specific kind of rapid cooking that dessicates and browns the surface you get out of air fryer devices is just kind of hard to replicate outside of them.

If you ever look inside an air fryer you can kind of immediately see why -- the heater-to-volume ratio is absurdly close. You have the equivalent of the biggest coiltop stove burner directly above a few quarts of air volume with a fan forcing air from it to circulate. It's just kind of unfair of a comparison for both toaster ovens and even full-size ones that advertise an "air fryer" mode by comparison for that reason.

I like it because it's easier and quicker to put a few chicken legs in the basket than to put them on a tray in the toaster oven.

That and our toaster oven is too complex but our air fryer is two dials.

I toss sweet potatoes in there for a good snack. Roast veggies. Mostly the air fryer cooks healthy foods fast which is nice.

It’s a little more complicated than this, but basically it’s just a smaller, faster convection oven. They’re cool but not lifechanging IMO

Nah we cook fish in ours.

Losing weight is easier (less oil) and cooking times are faster.

It’s just a more compressed oven. You can eat healthy or unhealthy with it

It's just an oven optimised for airflow.

Even fan-forced, a normal oven recirculates the same air around, which carries moisture evaporated from whatever you're cooking.

Air Fryer is just a much smaller oven, with a similar sized element and a bigger fan, that also has an exhaust, so moisture-laden air is expelled from the unit and the air hitting the food is always hot and dry.

But all-in-all it's just a type of oven and you can absolutely use one as a regular little oven or if you crack the door a little and turn the heat up a bit, you can use regular fan-forced oven as an 'air fryer'

Use it like a regular oven but reduce temperature by 25°F or 15°C and reduce cooking time by 20%.

Turn dial to set temperature

Turn another dial to set time