GAD GET GURU
T3’s tasty tech chef serves up more delicious answer morsels
Larry the Robot disliked it when his chicken fans got too close
ILLUSTRATIONS: STEPHEN KELLY
Q GRETCHEN COOK, BIRMINGHAM
What exactly is an air fryer?
A
Even if you think you don’t have an air fryer, you probably do. It’s essentially just a cheap plastic fan oven: a heatproof fan blows air over a heating element to cook food. For all the buttons and flashy features that top air fryers offer, there’s little more to it than that.
They’re not exactly the same, though. GaGu honestly wouldn’t bother to answer your question if they were, let alone give it this much oxygen. The key difference is design: the shape of the air fryer basket means that heat can hit all sides of your food at once for extra all-around crispiness, which coincidentally is something Guru really must go to see his GP about. Also, the food is typically a little closer to the heat source, something GaGu suspects makes only a homeopathic difference.
The key air fryer effect can be replicated in your regular oven if you use a mesh tray. Go for the first party option, if there is one – if not, Planitproducts offers an extendable mesh shelf for £13 which should fit most ovens.
The key difference is design: the shape of the basket means that heat can hit all sides of your food at once for extra crispiness
The second difference is marketing. GaGu would argue that it’s not brilliant marketing (he’d have found a way to eliminate the word ‘fry’ to entice healthconscious chip-eaters) but it’s better than calling it a budget countertop convection oven. The label is even more important these days, given that some air fryers are starting to approach the size of actual ovens, and the big gimmicks of the first generation, like Tefal’s food-flipping ActiFry mechanism, seem to have been lost to time.