Having thus separated the wheat from the chaff, I gave my three favorite air fryers a heftier assignment: I hand-cut sweet potatoes into half-inch spears, soaked them in water for a half hour, and then dried them off. Read on for the winners. If you fall in line with this thinking and don't want another single-use appliance, a compromise is the Cuisinart, a convection toaster oven with an “air fryer” setting.
Because each machine is designed a little differently, I relied on the manufacturer’s instructions in terms of time, temperature, etc, for each preparation—though the specs ended up being pretty similar across all machines. In my search for the best air fryers, I made tater tots, zucchini, and chicken tenders. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. I started with smaller amounts of food in each of six air fryers: about two servings of frozen tater tots—driven by my conviction that the best reason to buy an air fryer would be to have great tater tots at home—and then a mixture of zucchini and summer squash, sliced into coins, splashed with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt. The machines run at the time and temperature the user specifies and then automatically shut off. In tests of smaller amounts of food, this GoWISE air fryer performed really well, and is definitely an affordable alternative if you’re dying for an air fryer but also need to pay your utility bills. All products featured on Epicurious are independently selected by our editors. They were evenly browned, crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. 3 Qt Air Fryer. The NuWave Brio Digital had a confusing interface and a wire basket that was annoying to clean.
The Farberware 3.2 Quart Air Fryer had a timer that ticked loudly and—more importantly—the food it turned out was the worst of the lot.
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The loser, in all this product testing? Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Simon Andrews. You’re seeing this ad based on the product’s relevance to your search query. It’s tater tots.
You’re seeing this ad based on the product’s relevance to your search query. If you don’t have a lot of money to spend—and not a lot of people to feed—your best air fryer bet is the GoWISE 3.7-quart. I also tried homemade chicken tenders in each of the three best machines, but results were strange—mostly because the breading turned into a great big mess. All of the above, plus it’ll mow your lawn!). As traditional boxy convection ovens, the Cuisinart and other products like it don’t pretend to be something they’re not, though they now boast of their air-frying capabilities as well. I ignored the machines’ preset functions for popular air fryer options like fries and chicken.
In reality, though, an air fryer is no such thing: it’s a marketing label. With the stipulation that the user is expected to shake the basket once or twice during cooking, does the design of the machine maximize the movement of air over all the food in the basket? Just don't expect it to make good toast. Is the food crispy? I divided 24-ounce batches for each air fryer, tossing each portion in a half tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkling it with salt.
For more about the testing process in our search for the best air fryers, scroll to the bottom of the page. I’d almost recommend it unreservedly. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, All customers get FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon, Ultrean Air Fryer, 4.2 Quart (4 Liter) Electric Hot Air Fryers Oven Oilless Cooker with LCD Digital Screen and Nonstick Frying Pot, ETL/UL Certified,1-Year Warranty,1500W (Black), Ultrean Air Fryer, 12.5 Quart Air Fryer Oven, Toaster Oven with Rotisserie,Bake,Dehydrator,Auto Shutoff and 8 Touch Screen Preset, 8 Accessories & 50 Recipes, Ultrean Air Fryer, 4.5 Quart Electric Hot Air Fryers Oven Cooker with Deluxe Temperature and Time Knob, Non-Stick Basket, UL Certified, Cook Book, 1-Year Warranty, 1500w. Everything came out crunchy and golden; the food got a little darker around the edges than with some other air fryers, but this did not particularly trouble me. Epicurious may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. However... Because it’s a whole different machine, it’s enormous relative to the other options. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Chefman TurboFry 3.6 Quart Air Fryer Oven w/ Digital Touch Screen, Dishwasher Safe Flat Basket, He… © 2020 Condé Nast. This is generally not a set-it-and-forget-it situation, though; for many dishes, user’s manuals request that you shake the basket halfway through the cooking, so food within gets exposed more evenly to the hot air. Up To 8 Qt. And it was a point against the otherwise great Cuisinart, which scorched some corners of the chicken while leaving raw breading in other parts.
And the 3.7-quart 7-in-1 model is in the 60–70 dollar range most places. Find which 3 qt air fryer is best. My electricity bill! Is it like fried food? This is the paramount concern. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, All customers get FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon, Power XL Smokeless Electric Indoor Removable Grill and Griddle Plates, Nonstick Cooking Surfaces, Glass Lid, 1500 Watt, 21X 15.4X 8.1, black, PowerXL Air Fryer Pro, Crisp, Cook, Rotisserie, Dehydrate; 7-in-1 Cooking Features; Deluxe Air Frying Accessories; 3 Recipe Books (6 Qt, Black), PowerXL Air Fryer Vortex - Multi Cooker with Roast, Bake, Food Dehydrator, Reheat Non Stick Coated Basket, Cookbook. There's a problem loading this menu right now. (Of course, if it’s an actual convection oven you want, it’s worth noting that you could get one for only a few hundred dollars more.) This air fryer won our product test thanks to its superior sweet-potato fry abilities. See below. And then there’s the matter of that toast: according to a previous Epicurious product review—which tested the Cuisinart as a toaster oven, not as an air fryer—it sucks at doing things that are not air frying, possibly for the same reasons it’s so good as an air fryer, which is that hot hot heat. The lesser benefit is that, if you’re familiar with how a toaster oven works, you don’t have to learn anything new—a tiresome activity I generally try to avoid. That’s the idea, anyway. I didn’t want it to be true, because the Philips—suggest retail price $300—is four or five times more expensive than some competitors. The greater benefit is that this thing is fantastic at air-frying, or, as old-timers might call it, convection cooking. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. Ad Choices, The 3 Best Air Fryers for Tater Tot Parties and Lonely Batches of Fish Sticks. The air-fried zucchini, for instance, was practically jelly, cooked to death with scarcely a hint of browning on the outside. We put top-ranked air fryers to the test to find out the best one (and also whether or not this newfangled thingy is really worth owning at all). If you don’t have a lot of money to spend—and not a lot of people to feed—your best air fryer bet is the GoWISE 3.7-quart. This criterium, of course, necessarily favors the machine designed for max air exposure: the Cuisinart. The burgeoning field of products on the market now under that moniker are actually similar to convection ovens, which use fans to circulate hot air within the chamber, cooking food faster and more evenly. To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories. It costs a fortune but bested the competitors—especially with larger volumes of food.