I love fried foods, but my wife hates it after I use the deep fryer and thinks the house smells like oil (I think it smells like fried deliciousness). Today she stumbled on a Phillips Airfryer at a huge discount. I have heard of these but have never used one nor do I know anyone who has. They are supposed to use a fraction of the oil of a normal deep fryer but supposedly have very similar results. My question is how “similar” actually are the results?
Does anyone here have any experience with these? I would love to be able to have nice fried foods that are healthier and won’t make my wife complain.
This is the model she found… but for only $199. I already have way too many kitchen gadgets, but if this one actually works I may go for it.
Just a tiny bit of experience. A local establishment got one right from the guy who invented one* while he was looking to license it to a big name company. Could even be the one you linked. I ate a piece of chicken breast lightly breaded and fried in one. It was ok. However, these have been out for several years and didn’t really take off, so I suspect it’s not the greatest gadget in the world. It may just be the price, don’t really know. Since I like the smell of fried deliciousness also I never considered one myself.
For that price, it would have to be the best fried food in existence to justify getting it instead of a ~$30 deep fryer from Walmart. I’m guessing it’s not the best fried food ever, and even if it’s almost as good, it’s way too expensive at $200, and near highway robbery at full price.
But its your money and your wife, sometimes you have to throw one away to please the other.
One of the cooking groups I belong to on Facebook was obsessed with them, and they’d all but convinced me to buy one a while back. I just didn’t have the money to spare at the time, and I have limited kitchen cupboard space so I was carefully considering if I had room.
The difference in price of the regular deep fryer (which I already have but can’t use indoors) and this one is $170. The price of getting rid of my wife would be half of everything I own.
I have one (not the same make and model but quite similar-looking) - they were doing a Green-Stamp kind of promo at my grocery store and I let my husband get me one as a birthday present.
It’s … okay. In combination with my french-fry cutting gadget, it does produce delicious french fries, so there’s that. But it doesn’t work for drippy batter-coated foods like onion rings or tempura, which is what I had in mind when I got it. If I was preparing little kid food like commercially prepared ready-to-fry frozen chicken nuggets, I might appreciate it more.
All in all, I would not recommend it unless you plan to make french fries at home a lot, have lots of kitchen space, and won’t feel any pinch from the purchase price.
I’m weak… very, very weak. Yesterday we sat and watched a lady do a demo of how to use different knives, and at the end ate some really good stir fry that she made. As a reward we got an additional 10% off of any purchases. I now have another kitchen gadget on my counter, and amazingly my wife was actually encouraging me to get it (I have to figure out what she did that she is atoning for… kind of like when I buy her flowers).
I didn’t get a chance to try it yesterday, but today my son was going to run home for lunch (he mentors at elementary schools) and asked if I could make him a corn dog. We had some in the freezer and I gave it a try. Three minutes to pre-heat, eight to cook and you would have thought they were deep fried, and no mess to clean up.
I’ve got a couple of zucchinis and some panko bread crumbs so will likely try some fried zucchini strips next and I’ve found a couple of really good looking shrimp recipes. I won’t deny that it may likely end up in the pantry taking up a square foot of space, but it is fun right now.
Too late to edit, but I’ve got a teenage son at home, and two other kids at college who come home sometimes so we have tons of frozen snacks that they can microwave, cook in the oven or deep fry. Deep frying is of course the best tasting but least healthy option, so if this makes it a bit easier and healthier it may get a lot of use.
We’ve all bought kitchen gadgets on impulse I’m sure. And maybe your wife just wants you to be happy (that’s what I tell myself, they’re too mysterious to understand their real motives )
The advice I’ve heard about these things is just to understand it isn’t REALLY a fryer. It’s more like a small convection oven. That’s not a bad thing – convection ovens can be great. And these are quicker to heat up and don’t heat up the whole kitchen.
If you already have a high-quality toaster oven, it can be redundant. Just depends on the kind of stuff you cook.
I’m gonna be subscribing to this thread and watching for your posts.
I asked this kind of question about 8 months ago and got no response but I’ve always been interested in a slightly healthier approach to — well, fritters and tempura (battered goods) as well as chicken kiev (egg wash & bread crumbs) and similar foods. And the many of the chinese dishes I make would go much better if I could throw a kara-age style of chicken into them instead of the wok-grilled chunks I now use. (It’s just too much of a pain to use the one wok to deep-fry, then clean it all up and do the stir-fry or other chinese dish.)
Yes please do! If I am underestimating my air fryer, I want to learn better.
Part of the reason I haven’t found any better ways to use it could be that I bought it in Asia and only got a very limited recipe booklet in Indonesian, with nothing I wanted to make (and a heavy emphasis on just heating up commercially prepared breaded products). If there are recipes for things like homemade onion rings or tempura that work, I would love to know!
Air fryers are really big over here in the Netherlands, no doubt because Philips is a Dutch brand. Before air fryers, everyone used deep fryers. $200 is a bit expensive but not unheard; we were able to get ours for about €130. They also make models where you don’t need any oil at all, like ours. I love our air fryer - it’s a lot easier to clean and what extra you pay now you save later with not having to buy oil. Again, at least over here, where household frying is much more common.
We mostly use ours for french fries, chicken nuggets, and potatoes. We’ve also done spring rolls in them (no problem) though we deep fried the tempura so I can’t speak to that. We’ve had zero problems with it, and they are very easy to clean. When we heat up the french fries, we tend to put a paper towel between the basket holder and the basket (note, the basket should be detachable) to help with the mess. You might try it with and without a paper towel though, as some have said it affects the taste.
Philips is definitely a good brand though, so I’d go for it. I would, however, try to find a model that requires no oil (not even a tablespoon or two) to function.
From another expat in The Hague, I also have an air fryer and so far I am happy with it. I have experimented with a bunch of things, and generally speaking the results have been satisfactory.
Call me skeptical but I don’t see how “airfrying” can reproduce the same product as traditional frying.
Traditional frying means your food is in contact with oil that’s heated up to over three hundred degrees. And the density of the oil transfers that heat into the food quickly. The result is an actual chemical reaction in the surface of the food (the Maillard reaction).
From what I can see, airfryers don’t get above 200 degrees. And you’re not going to get a Maillard reaction at temperatures that low. And air is much worse at transferring heat than liquid is.
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