Air fryer FAQs
Is air fried food healthy?
The short answer is that it depends what you’re cooking and how you define “healthy.” You can make fried Oreos in an air fryer and they certainly won’t be low in calories, but they will be lower in calories and fat than their deep-fried alternative.
Cassetty explained that deep-fried food is typically considered “unhealthy” because you’re often coupling a breading of refined grains with a dunk in a low-quality oil. The breading then absorbs oil as it’s fried, adding calories to your food. With an air fryer, you’ll use a fraction of the oil, cutting down on calories. But you still need a thin coating of oil to maximize the efficacy of the hot air as it blows across your food. That oil conducts heat and helps create that crispy exterior.
The reason air fryers and healthy eating are so often coupled is because air fryers have been marketed as a deep fryer alternative. While I can’t stress enough that you won’t be fooling anyone into thinking the food you made in an air fryer was deep-fried, you are going to get something that tastes oven-fried in a fraction of the time. And that efficiency is, I think, even more of a selling point.
Is an air fryer worth it?
If you’re interested in an air fryer as an alternative to deep frying, you’ll probably be disappointed. But an air fryer is an incredibly versatile appliance if you know how to take advantage of it. Both Cassetty and Laurence praise air fryers for their ability to cook pretty much any food quite quickly.
But Laurence, who has written two cookbooks dedicated to air fryer recipes, acknowledges that they have a bit of a learning curve. “You can’t just stick this egg-shaped thing on the counter and expect people to know how to use it,” she said. But she encouraged home cooks to keep experimenting and think beyond frozen French fries and chicken wings. She said her favorite thing to cook in an air fryer is a steak, and when she first did it she was shocked at how well it turned out.
Laurence and Cassetty both also emphasized the speed and energy efficiency of air fryers. Air fryers take very little, if any, time to preheat, so you’re saving both time and electricity. The location of the heating element — placed directly over the food — creates more efficiency, explained Laurence. “You can create similar results in an oven, but it’s going to take longer because your oven is way bigger and the [air flow] is not as direct,” she said. They also expel much less heat, which is especially handy during hot weather when you’d rather avoid turning on your oven.
An air fryer is also very simple to use and is great for amateur cooks and even teens just developing their skills in the kitchen. It’s not much of a step up from a microwave as far as safety is concerned. The exception here may be a model like the Instant Pot we recommend above where the heating element is much more exposed.
In a nutshell, an air fryer is worth it for its versatility and efficiency in roasting and baking if you have the counter space to spare, but it’s not going to fool anyone into thinking your food is deep-fried.
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