12 Cooks — Including Drew Barrymore — on Why They Love Their Air Fryer

It’s 2022 and one factor is definite: By now, you’re both an air fryer fanatic otherwise you stay severely skeptical. I fall into the latter camp — I’m proudly low-tech and wrestle with embracing new applied sciences in my kitchen. In addition to, counter house is severely restricted in my small kitchen. However more and more, I’m encountering the air fryer in conversations, social media scrolls, and recipes. So many residence cooks, cooks, and recipe bloggers love this instrument. I had only one query: Why?

With that one-word query in thoughts, I set out on a mission to be taught why this techy gadget has change into so standard — past the novelty of a brand new toy. I chatted with 12 cooks who ranged from residence cooks to skilled cooks — plus the one-and-only Drew Barrymore — about why the air fryer will get a lot play of their kitchens, and wow, have been they prepared to share.

“Air fryers prepare dinner meals completely each time,” Jake Grigg, the TikTok- and Instagram-famous content material creator behind @airfryerguy, instructed me. He, like a lot of cooks, praised the air fryer’s potential to prepare dinner meals with little to no mess, in file time. “The principle motive I exploit an air fryer is comfort,” Grigg added. “The meals cooks sooner than an oven and there’s little to no preheating concerned. Air fryers are simpler to wash than deep fryers and also you don’t find yourself with splashes of oil throughout your kitchen.” Simpler, sooner, cleaner, higher? Hmm … appears like one thing I may get into.

Plain and easy, so many cooks agree: This can be a enjoyable instrument. Andrea Nguyen —  the creator of Viet World Kitchen, cooking teacher, and creator of quite a few cookbooks, together with Vietnamese Meals Any Day — finds it notably pleasant to rethink a few of her favourite basic recipes. “I’ve used it for Asian dishes like salt and pepper shrimp, salt and pepper tofu, Japanese-style fried hen, candy and bitter pork, plus candy and bitter spareribs.” Together with air fryer recipes, her web site affords some useful recommendations on the way to get one of the best out of your air fryer — for instance, don’t fry meals which can be too moist (as a result of they’re susceptible to stay), and make sure to use some fats to maintain issues from drying out.

There’s no debate right here: The air fryer makes meals crispy, crunchy, and, nicely, downright scrumptious. Upstate New York residence prepare dinner and former air frying skeptic Beth O’Neil says, “I really like the air fryer as a result of it provides a very good crunch to frozen greens, versus blanching them.” Yep, you learn that proper: The air fryer will even crisp up frozen veggies. 

O’Neil provides that she by no means would have taken the leap had her mom not regifted hers as a result of she was too intimidated to present it an opportunity. O’Neil instantly used it to reheat leftover pizza, producing wow-inducing outcomes. “Spoiler: My mother requested for her air fryer again after she noticed the pizza hack.” (See our tackle one of the simplest ways to reheat pizza.)

“The opposite day, I bought my son to eat a little bit of candy potato, which was such a win,” says Regina Chaperon, a house prepare dinner in Massachusetts, and one of many founders of the web site Air Fryer Addicts. “He’s sometimes a choosy eater, however is extra prepared to strive crunchy, scrumptious air-fried meals — it doesn’t matter what it’s. The air fryer additionally features as a approach for him to experiment with cooking that’s a lot safer than cooking on a stovetop.”

Kara Shilalie, the opposite Boston-based creator behind Air Fryer Addicts, praises her air fryers (yep, plural!) for a way a lot time they shave off dinner prep. A standard baked or roasted salmon and Brussels sprouts dinner, which might take half-hour to organize whenever you account for preheating the oven, will get decreased to a fast eight minutes together with her air fryer. “It could be an apparent reply, however the time-saving factor actually is one of the best,” Shilalie says. Each she and Chaperon are time-strapped academics and are amazed at how rapidly dinner prep and cleanup occur with their air fryers.

“My air fryer makes cooking scrumptious meals so much simpler,” says registered dietitian Anna Rios, who creates vegan recipes on her TikTok, @healthysimpleyum. “I extremely suggest making tofu within the air fryer and coating it with soy sauce, garlic powder, and dietary yeast.” The yeast acts like a low-carb breading, and provides loads of taste. Attempt Kitchn’s recipe for air fryer tofu to get a style of how crispy and scrumptious tofu cooked within the air fryer may be.

The air fryer has modified how Sara Abudlaziz, a digital recipe creator who just lately launched a YouTube channel, approaches her each day cooking duties. She notes that searing salmon or hen on the stovetop can take twice so long as cooking it within the air fryer. “To not point out the mess of getting to wash pans, utensils, meals, and oil splashes all around the range,” she provides.

“I’ve discovered that standard ovens go away frozen meals — like french fries or hen nuggets — both soggy and pasty or brown and dry,” says Josh Porosky, a house prepare dinner in Austin. That’s an enormous bummer, as a result of frozen meals are enormous time-savers. Like many Kitchn readers, Porosky depends on them for snacks and simple meals. “I feel the air fryer’s magic is in re-frying the residual floor oils, leaving a crispy and ‘deep-fried’ exterior.” Sounds sciencey! And engaging. For the file, Porosky is a giant fan of French toast sticks at 380°F for 7 minutes.

Natasha Jackson, a North Dakota residence prepare dinner with a B.S. in Diet Science, takes an all-foods-fit method to cooking and consuming. However whereas she doesn’t ban something from her food plan, she does admire the air fryer’s potential to prepare dinner up meals with much less oil (and grease mess). “The new temperature permits me to get the crispy style of fried meals, whereas sustaining a decrease fats content material.” 

Actress, life-style guru, and all-around Renaissance lady Drew Barrymore loves air fryers a lot, she created her personal mannequin, pictured above. This instrument will get such main playtime in her kitchen, she feels it makes her total life simpler. Barrymore additionally has two aha-moment suggestions for tastier outcomes: “Should you make that little bit of additional effort to dry your meals as a lot as potential — simply dab with a paper towel — earlier than popping it in, and resist the urge to overload and overcrowd your basket, you’ll get that good crispy texture you’re after.”

Air fryers are available a wide range of sizes, however mini air fryers, like Sprint’s 2-quart capability mannequin pictured above, are particularly helpful to have in the event you’re cooking for one. It’s served California-based residence prepare dinner Sophie Shafer-Landau for over 4 years, permitting her to prepare dinner single parts of protein in a flash. “Salmon and hen are accomplished in underneath 20 minutes, with out having to take care of the oven,” she notes. One different huge advantage of her cooking-for-one mannequin? “It’s particularly nice for somewhat condominium with no dishwasher and barely any counter house for home equipment. This knocks out the necessity for a toaster or microwave in most conditions.”

Are you in love with the air fryer, or are you a skeptic? Tell us within the feedback beneath.