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Discussion Thread 🤩 Tuesday 12 August 2025
(aussie.zone)
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Hey does anyone here have an air fryer? Thinking about buying one because the Minipeelers would find it more manageable to cook some small foods for themselves rather than lighting the gas oven we have (piezo is broken so it has to be lit with a bamboo skewer). What brand do you have, and is it a good one/do you like it? I'm tending towards the ones that look like a little oven that you can see into (less heat loss when opening to see in a basket, methinks). Any thoughts?
Air fryer rambles (spoiler for length)
spoiler
I got an el cheapo Anko one from Kmart about a year ago. No glass door, very basic controls with some "pre-set" buttons that are quite quite useless. Does one person just fine. I mostly use it for cooking frozen fish. I have done hard boiled eggs in it too and they worked just fine and was much easier than boiling them. I've had no success with veg other than sliced and oiled carrots in tinfoil, but that works excellently with lots of nice carrotty juice generated. I have tried to cook small joints in it with mixed results. It does pork with crispy crackling very well indeed as long as the top is fairly level. Not particularly easy to clean - I find I need to attend to it as soon as it cools down or any fat really clings to the basket and is a pain to remove. Yes it's non-stick coated but that's degrading already so I use a small tray, ramekins or tinfoil/parchment bundles with the food inside and that works very well indeed.There's a bigger two basket one at work (Phillips) that my boss uses for steaks, chops etc. as he's madly keto at present. Its quite easy to clean and he says it cooks well. I don't use it myself as I prefer a different kind of lunch.
Basically an air fryer is a very small oven. For single or maybe two serves of a single item I reckon it justifies not turning on the big oven and heating a lot of air for no real purpose. For cooking anything large like a chicken or full size cakes or tray bakes etc. you really do need the big oven to get good convected heat. The biggest problem I found with the air fryer was the top down heat so the top of things cooked much faster than the bottom. Turning the contents is very necessary and it takes a few tries to get the timing right.
Buying another? I'd go for easy clean over glass door I reckon. And a longer timer - mine is 15 mins max and that just isn't long enough if cooking at lower temperatures.
I have one, gifted to me from my dad from Aldi years ago.
It’s my go to since my oven broke.
Does most of what I want to eat pretty well, you might want to invest into a larger one if you want to make multiple serves of things.
The Phillips brand used to be talked about highly.
I don't have one but I know kids.
They should be ok as long as they use mitts all the time and remember to switch it off when done. And does it have a timer? So they don't let things get burnt.
That's a good idea, to get one with a shutoff timer of some kind. Some of them have got heaps of features and some are really simple. I'm having trouble deciding what to get because there are so many out there.
I like simple but that's me.
I'm leaning towards simple as well.. especially if the kids are going to have a go with it. Also, I don't want to pay for a lot of functions I'm not going to use.
Not sure about air fryer, but could you use one of those stick lighters for the oven? Might be a bit easier than a skewer. like this
Can’t help with the air fryer but have a gas stove tip… when the lighter on our gas stove broke, a wooden peg attached to a chopstick worked well (put a match in the peg 1st then light it)