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The first commercial convention oven was released in the 1940s. The first prototype of the general concept happened in the 1910s.
Even if you mean the modern household tabletop convenience version, the Nuwave convection oven was already an informercial staple by 2003.
When talking about air fryers, my husband once rightly pointed out that air fryers are just countertop convection ovens.
I walked over to him, held my index finger up to his lips, and whispered to him, “shhh. Air fryer. AIR FRYER.” 🤣
Yes. And I think it’s important to understand exactly what a convection oven actually is.
At its most basic, it’s an oven with a heating element and a fan that circulates hot air around the cooking chamber. That’s it. The circulating air improves heat transfer and helps food cook and brown more evenly.
Now, manufacturers have increasingly started calling a particular implementation of convection an “air fryer” and charging a premium for it, as though they’ve invented an entirely new cooking technology. They haven’t. Convection cooking has been around for decades.
An air fryer is essentially a compact, highly optimized convection oven: hot air is circulated rapidly around the food, usually with a basket or perforated tray that allows that air to contact more of the food’s surface.
So when you’re shopping for a range and you see one advertised as having an “Air Fry” function, don’t automatically assume you’re getting some revolutionary new appliance. In many cases, you’re paying extra for a marketing term applied to a convection system that has existed for generations.
Wouldn’t the presence of a fan turn them into a forced convection oven?
Yes.
Companies like Ninja charge premium for everything. Air fryers are stupid cheap otherwise, which makes sense for what they are (heating element, fan and a drawer).
Air fryers, and to a lesser extent fan ovens, use a fan to move the air rather than just using air convection currents.
To put it in perspective, that’s just over 100 years out of 4.5 billion the earth has existed. Or 300 million years or so complex life existed (that mostly wouldn’t be able to fathom the core concepts you’d need to know to even understand what having an air fryer means, where I’d consider “figured out that forest fires can contain more delicious food in some places (where intensity is high enough to cook plants and animals but not enough to turn them to charcoal)” to be pretty smart). Or several million that hominids have existed and using stone or better tools. Or several thousand since we figured out how to manage our food production rather than depend on always finding it. Or several hundred since we got much better at harnessing energy.
Also, I’d push back on a) the invention date being more relevant than the mass release date, and b) early convection ovens counting as “air fryers”, so that 100 years should probably also be reduced.
Wait until you find out about microwaves!
As I understand microwaves, they are essentially powered by magical runes we trap inside.
Hextech
Oh is that it? I always thought there was a little French guy that lived inside the compartment, and when you turn it on, it electrocuted him which caused his little tiny balls to boil inside and he screamed super loud but he was small enough that we couldn’t hear it, and the supersonic screaming agitated the food into being hot on an atomic level.
Didn’t not expect this post to turn into “how it’s made” about air fryers.
And with the results of climate change going on, you don’t even need an airfryer anymore. Just a bucket of air will do the trick.
Just hold your chicken leg out the window for a few seconds.
I think air frying technology isn’t so grand as a stable, functioning society.
Essentially we got fucked once Falwell figured out anti-abortion-access radicals will vote against their own interests. It didn’t hurt that white America really hates blacks.
Anyhow, that helped to get Reagan in to power and the economy turned K-shaped and never recovered, and at that point liberal democracy in the US was doomed.
Agree to disagree. A society would be fine, but I’ll take the air fryers.
Weren’t we frying shit in the air with old cast iron stoves as well?
We probably did in old Mesopotamia with clay ovens or something.
And breathing in fly ash from the coal, which contains increased concentrations of uranium and thorium.
Compared to that an airfryer is a god send.
Is an airfryer just a small fan oven?
Its a small convection oven, that works more efficiency because the heating element is like an inch above the food, and heating a very tightly confined area, so intense temperatures can be more concentrated and easily achieved.
Yes, they’re countertop convection ovens.
“I was born in the wrong generation” says person who just discovered The Beatles or Led Zeppelin
Right? People find one cool thing about an Era and think Jim crow is acceptable
I haven’t used my oven at all since I got the air fryer.
Oven still gets the last laugh when you learn what air fryers are
And as he says in that video, air fryers are much better at making things crispy quickly
Turns out you don’t need such a huge amount of empty space for a lot of things and once you get rid of it, it works much better
Though the name is still stupid. There’s no frying going on
Yeah, but an oven heats up your whole house when turned on…
You should probably close the door then /j
An ez bake with a fan?
Literally just the old school stove top burner turned upside down with a fan on it, for the one I own.
They are good for quick small batch stuff, but way less efficient than modern fan oven for anything bigger. Once you run for long enough to mitigate heating the ovens larger thermal mass, oven always wins.
What if I want to fry food with the fires of 7 Hells
I hope that’s real brick behind that. I’ve seen some pretty gnarly damage from people using their BBQs too close to the side of the house.
I hate that I ever, or will ever, eat food that didn’t involve this. What is it?
A wok burner. It’s used a lot in Southeast Asia, and is specially associated to Cantonese cuisine.
That being said, fried rice/noodles/veggies is universal, and you might be able to buy or set up something similar yourself.
Yes but can you afford anything to fry with this air?
why do people like air fryers more than toaster ovens? i don’t get it
Most toaster ovens, even ones with strong convection for “air frying”, are not quite consistent enough in their heating. You have to pay far more than you would for an air fryer to get even heat coil distribution and a good door seal for that. The specific kind of rapid cooking that dessicates and browns the surface you get out of air fryer devices is just kind of hard to replicate outside of them.
If you ever look inside an air fryer you can kind of immediately see why – the heater-to-volume ratio is absurdly close. You have the equivalent of the biggest coiltop stove burner directly above a few quarts of air volume with a fan forcing air from it to circulate. It’s just kind of unfair of a comparison for both toaster ovens and even full-size ones that advertise an “air fryer” mode by comparison for that reason.
I have an old toaster oven that has a really weak convection fan but it moves so little air it is nowhere near an air fryer. The timer doesn’t work anymore and it’s ugly but I have another timer and it just works. I don’t own an air fryer and I’m not going to buy one until my toaster oven dies.
I got a ninja air fryer for 50 bucks because the old Philips one needed internal cleaning to stop it smoking
I’m all for reducing waste, this was the first time I threw something out that technically was functional
I didn’t lose any sleep. And I fry free of smoke. Can recommend new stuff sometimes just because we don’t live that long anyway
I like it because it’s easier and quicker to put a few chicken legs in the basket than to put them on a tray in the toaster oven.
That and our toaster oven is too complex but our air fryer is two dials.
But cleaning the basket vs cleaning a baking tray?
Meh. Strangely easy. Especially if you do it almost immediately instead of letting it bake on.
Good point though, there are more nooks and crannies. If I put something juicy in there without a little foil tray, it’d get nasty. It’s not a mesh basket in mine, it’s a stamped metal bucket thingy with occasional holes. The foil doesn’t mess with the cooking, afaik.
Housing and Healthcare
Obligatory Technology Connections’ video.
I’d like to not be reliant on a small handful of corporations and cheap plastic devices, tbh.
I prefer to fry potatoes, but you can fry shit if you like. Just keep it in your air fryer.
You’ve heard of boiling shit in a kettle, now get ready for frying shit in an air fryer
