Thank you, I’ll give it a try, I like firm yolks but I like runny ones too, so I will.
@Jane_Williamson, I rarely cook things as large as a chicken and as far as spuds are concerned I know there are various ways I can cook them, but in this machine I normally cook multi veg and in the steamer they don’t need to be separated, in the air-fryer I find that is not possible, except in different drawers.
@plod , I haven’t tried that yet, a bit worried about explosions, but if I want boiled I can use the steamer.
What setting do you put them on, time and temp also?
@Corona We downsized to a mini oven some years ago, with heating bars above and below and I didn’t find it very usable. As far as boiling eggs is concerned, a saucepan needs heat under it and we only have a stand alone hotplate which has to be used on a work surface and can’t be put away again afterwards for a long time because it takes too long for it to cool down.
@chrisell , yes the best way by far to cook oven chips, the mini-oven always left them soft, the AF gives delicious crispy ones.
If it fails, try an induction hot plate, instant heat and near instant cool down. One of my next purchaes for outdoor kitchen. I and going deep fat frier for other things (old school)
I’m seriously considering one, will have to be a big family sized basket though as need to cook enough chips! Also would like to be able to fit a chicken. In summer I think it would be awesome in our summer kitchen as so often I refuse to cook inside when its really hot! I’m going to save money and get a ‘used once or twice and didn’t get on with it’ from LBC just waiting for the size I want or maybe the July sales!
I am being nagged to get one and trying to push back where I can. Wife is a packatarian, thats a vegetarian that eats processed packaged food so re heating crap really. That doesnt require any special equipment in my book.
We always eat together, but once a week the menu splits and Madame has her farmed salmon with a girly salad, and I’ll have lamb, or something offalous and manly (probably with one or two of the many root veg that she won’t eat).
The problem with many air fryers is the shape and size. You must needs make the food fit the device. Our next will be on of the Ninjas, which gives all of the advantages with few of the constraints.
for anyone needing a chuckle… I mention that OH was horrified to discover he had married a gorgeous girl who literally did not know how to cook… not even how to boil an egg…
We have two lovely, very generous cosmopolitan SA friends who’ve now lived in Europe for several decades, but when they got married the groom complained to his new father-in-law that his wife couldn’t cook. She was dispatched to a cordon bleu cookery school in London and he’s been happy ever since, and whenever we visit Paris, they’re the most perfect and gracious of hosts
I hope she sent her OH off to learn about helping around the house… laundry, washing-up, hoovering etc etc… and not to forget ironing… (I hate ironing)
We have a recently acquired Ninja, my wife loves it - the versatility, what she sees as low maintenance pans, independent, yet synchronised cooking. It sits on the countertop as it is a heavy-ish beast and not really very easy to squirrel away in a small kitchen cupboard. It has been used to cook all number of things, chips, meat, veggie stuff, including two mini-loaves and some cupcakes. If it wasn’t for the sourdough breadmaking with the requirement for volume for a decent sized loaf, I reckon that the traditional oven’s days would be numbered. Me - the only time I touched it was to move it slightly into a position more aligned with the rear edge of the countertop and clean the pans. I find the whole pan cleaning ritual tedious and cumbersome - you’re not supposed to put them in the dishwasher because it damages them or something - in my book, that’s a design failure for a convenience food preparation system, but that’s just me I guess.
Lots of people selling silicon liners for AF’s
Good to know its been a success, still trying to work out if it would really get used or just take up more space. We have a split range cooker and we basically only use the small oven. The microwave is used for fast cooking of veg to trying to work out if this is another gadget going to gather dust?
Possibly depends on your attitude to cooking. For us it is a pleasure that we share - we still have our main meal in the evening and head to the kitchen with a glass of wine to cook, feed the dog, and chat etc. So cooking times really don’t matter - but things that don’t go in dishwasher do! Only our omelette pan is cleaned by hand (it has never been washed, just gets wiled when hot).
Sharing life with a vegetarian makes that impossible as no animal yada yada yada so it gets a thorough wasing every time. I cook pizzas in the frying pan, veg in the microwave or steamed above something else. Eggs frying pan or boiling water in a saucepan. Defrosting in the microwave and oven for roasting etc. Ok the roasting is where the air fryer would score highly as it would be 20 mins ahead of the small oven which never really gets above 225c so crackling doesnt really happen. Just trying to see where this may fit in.
We’ve got a dual Ninja , it probably gets used nearly every day, and the grease proof paper liners make cleaning easy but they dont work with the “crisper” plates. The only time we use the conventional fan oven (80 cm) is for cooking frozen pizza. As a comparison, the big electric oven used 1.2kw to cook 2 frozen pizzas last night (been at a local do all afternoon), day before the Ninja used 0.6 kw to cook 6 chicken thighs (according to edf et moi).
