Convection ovens. The branding of ‘air fryer’ always makes me cringe.
I was like you once and believed a convection oven and air fryer are the same thing and produce the same results. But I was wrong!
There is a subtle but crucial difference between an air fryer and a convection oven. A convection oven only circulates air around inside the oven, keeping the steam trapped with the food, while an air fryer actually removes all of the steam away from the food, allowing it to get much crispier much faster than is possible with a convection oven.
You are kind of right though, because now that air fryers have become popular, they’ve started marketting small toaster-oven-style convection ovens as “air fryers”, even though they legitimately are not air fryers and do not cook the food the same way that an air fryer does.
so an air fryer is more like a small convection oven?
if you want the steam to escape, you can just open the oven door for a few seconds and there it goes.
also the air circulation is more intense in an air fryer, and it’s a smaller enclosed space which is easier to keep at a high temperature. both of these also help food cook more evenly.
My oven has gas burners in the top and bottom of the oven, and a tiny fan in the back for convection bake. The wee fan is meant to help distribute heat evenly throughout the oven. Convection is meant for baking multiple trays on both racks - it spreads the heat evenly throughout.
The air fryer has a big fan right behind the big heating element, which sits a few inches above the food, and blasts heat directly onto the food.
Similar components, but entirely different results.
Your comparison is rightly dispels the misconception that any “frying without oil” is happening though. An air fryer is closer to an oven, convection or otherwise, than it is to a deep fryer and pan-frying with oil. You just won’t get the same speed or results with a convection oven, though. They’re different designs.
I’m not entirely against calling it frying, in both cases you have heat transfer by immersion in a dry liquid as contact medium, as opposed to heating with infrared radiation (e.g. toaster, many kinds of spits), direct contact with no or little contact medium (hot pan with no/minimum oil, waffle iron), using water (which is wet) as contact medium which invariably makes things soggy instead of crispy and thus very different, or directly moving the atoms in the food (microwave).
That is: If you have a look at all the different ways to transfer heat into things then frying and baking are actually darn close to each other in the first place, compared to the rest. It’s the reason you can definitely make a passable calzone in a pan. And air frying in particular brigs baking into the frying range of crispiness so I’d say fair is fair, you can fry with air as long as you make you air mean enough.
Any decent electric convection oven has an element around the fan. Mine is 2500w, 1000w more than most countertop appliances.
https://www.partselect.com/PS2368832-Frigidaire-318255511-Convection-Element-2500W.htm
Even the ones built into microwaves have it but they’re a measly 900w it seems.
That’s a big point in the video, the creator also thought that they’re just glorified convection ovens. But it turns out that air fryers and convection ovens are optimized for different tasks so the food comes out differently, and there are other advantages to an air fryer too, depending on the situation. Just because they use the same technology doesn’t mean they do the exact same thing.
Pff, it’s just heating and stirring the air, not frying it.
…fuck, now I get what you meant! Sorry I kind of ruined your joke.
(I’m one of those primitives still taking raw air all the time. Just seasoned with a bit pollution, mmnh, tasty NOx)
great. now I want a sunbeam radiant control toaster.
For some reason I knew it was technology connections just by reading the title
Most of them are a pain in the ass to properly clean. My mom has a ninja air fryer. There is no way to remove the top grate. The grease builds up in it.
