Like everyone else, I am sitting around all day looking for things to do to break the boredom. On TV for a significant portion of my life, I have been bombarded with "infomercials" telling me about the latest and greatest home device that will save me millions of money and minutes of time. On occasion, I succumb to the pressure and buy something. Over the past few years with the advent of Amazon I have developed the habit of looking at online reviews before I buy anything. To my amazement over 90% of the things, I look up to turn out to have a high percentage of negative reviews in which case I don't buy the product, so the actual products I buy are minimal.
Having all this time on my hands has led me to cook more and a larger variety of foods at home and usually I make a big mess as I am a messy cook. Being from the South I love beyond logic fried foods, especially fried chicken and French fries. So why not try those great foods. Alton Brown has a YouTube video on making fried chicken that seemed simple enough. Unfortunately, it takes quite a lot of time and when it was all said and done the kitchen was covered in grease and oil. Same thing with French Fries. Joel Robuchon has a great recipe but most people do not realize in order to make great fries you actually are supposed to fry them twice meaning twice as much oil and grease on the countertops.
Over the past year, I have seen ad on ad for an air fryer. Emeril Lagasse has been heavily advertising his Emeril's 360 fryer for a couple of hundred dollars and of course, the ad says you can cook anything with no mess in 10 minutes or less, Right? So I spent close to the past 9 to 10 months researching air fryers. First, an air fryer is nothing more than a convection oven where hot air is circulated constantly around the food at a high temperature. If you read the reviews some are better than others and cheaper than others. They also vary in size as well as some having a Rotisserie. After months of thought, I settled on a Ninja air fryer pictured here.
It was around $100 and had some of the best reviews and fewest negative reviews. We also have another Ninja product we purchased years ago that has been indestructible. This particular air fryer is one of the smaller ones so the first "con" is you won't be able to prepare a large amount of food for a large family or party. It prepares food for one or two but for us being only two in the household it works well for us. But I will say the main motivation for me was I didn't want to invest money in a larger one only to find out I did not like it so I got a smaller and cheaper one in case I decided to throw it out as a failed experiment. But that didn't happen and I am happy to report the air fryer we have at least is amazing!
The big "pro" of this air fryer is cooking time is quick and the mess is small to nonexistent and clean up is simple. I'm fairly sure the first thing anyone makes is French fries and I was no exception. Freshly peeled and cut French fries were coated in oil and placed in the fryer and they came out crisp, golden brown, and no preservatives or additives. There is a small learning curve using an air fryer. Things you learn are cook with a higher temp and shorter times and midway through the cooking cycle, you need to pause the fryer and turn or shake the food up a little bit. You also need to preheat the air fryer for 3 or 4 minutes prior to putting your food inside. So far we have made fried chicken, bread loaves, schnitzel, baked potatoes, fried fish and everything has turned out well and on many occasions as good as you would get if you went out. Our unit also has a roasting button and reheat button which increases the versatility of the unit. So overall we are very pleased with our purchase and for two people we can prepare a really nice meal is generally a half-hour serving fresh foods freshly cooked. What more could you ask for?
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