: Are ovens and air fryers the same? Aren’t they just both cooking machineries that uses indirect heat?
In: Technology
Air fryers use a fan to blow hot air into food and cook by convection. This allows faster heat transfer than just sitting in an oven. It’s not fundamentally different technology, just a slight variation to mote closely resemble the results of frying in oil without actually using oil.
They are like convection ovens (or the settings) that circulate air/heat from the top as well.
But Air Fryers are much smaller, so they heat up quicker. Often without any need for pre-heating.
And since they’re closer to the heat source / air flow, it can make some stuff crispier (or just much easier without messing with the temperature and rack settings)
If you wanna make something quick for 1-2 people, or just reheat some leftover food (especially pizza fried chicken, or french fries), or make something frozen like nuggets, Air Fryers are better just for how fast they can do it. Your food will be done by the time your oven has pre-heated.
Air fryers are small specialized convection ovens with a specific design for food placement within the oven to yield results that a re ‘close’ to frying.
Yes. Air fryers are just convection ovens. A conventional oven may not have a fan to blow the air around.
The main difference is air fryers move the hot air around, kinda combining an oven with a blow dryer, so the food cooks faster and more crispy.
This is because in a standard oven, the air immidietly touching the food is being cooled by the water evaporating from the food and becoming humid with that evaporated water, so the surface doesn’t crisp.
An air fryer is constantly moving new hot and dry air in and the humid air out.
Many modern ovens now have a convection mode, where they have a fan moving the hot air making them basically the same as an air fryer. Since they are a larger cooking space, it’s not always quite as effective, but it’s the same principle.
The other main difference is that ait fryers are tiny. So they preheat crazy fast. This makes the whole cooking process seem even quicker since traditional ovens take so long to come to temp.
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