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What is an Air Fryer? Is air fried food healthy?

An AirFryer is a kitchen gadget which can fry foods using 80% less oil than in the deep fried method. The Air Fryer uses high velocity hot air to do the actual cooking. So the food being cooked is surrounded by hot air instead of hot oil, and thus, there is actually no need of any oil in the air frying process, but to make the air fried food taste better a little bit of oil is added. The AirFryer can fry food like potato slices to make french fries and almost all other snacks and food items which are usually deep fried. Since the temperature of the hot air can be very closely controlled and the air fryer has automatic settings for temperature and time of frying, the air fryer is capable of turning out very tasty crispy food every time without over cooking or burning.

Air Fryers are getting popular in India. Air fFryer advantages like cooking tasty healthy food with minimum oil and the ease of use of airfryers are makinig air fryers very popular in India. An air fryer is very easy to use, just load the food set the timer and start. The air fryer will off itself when the cooking is done. Further down this page we have provided names of the most popular air fryer recipe books and web site links to the best Air Fryer recipes.

How does an Air Fryer work without oil?

An air fryer is a cooking device which cooks food by circulating hot air around the food. So there is no need of any oil in Air fryer cooking. How an air fryer works is by using an electric heater over which air is blown by a circulating fan. The hot air coming out of the heating coil then flows around the food. Since the hot air is flowing in a closed circuit inside an insulated container, the efficiency of air fryer cooking is very good. Also an air fryer can cook and fry food without the use of oil. This is because the food is gently and evenly heated all around by hot air and therefore there is no need of any oil for cooking in an air fryer.

Below is an official video released by Philips, the world’s leading air fryer manufacturer, explaining how an air fryer works. It is a very short video of roughly one minute.

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Video: How Philips air fryer Works

This video explains how the Philips Air Fryer works using their ‘Rapid Air’ technology which circulates hot air around the food contained in a metal cooking basket. This air fryer uses little or no oil. It can fry, bake or grill food.

Philips also claims that air fryer cooking causes less smell than ordinary fryers. Air Fryers are easy to clean, safe and uses very little electricity

Air Fryer electricity usage

The Electricity used by an Air Fryer is only about 0.25 units for a normal cooking cycle of 20 minutes. To explain the electricity usage of an air fryer let us take an example of an Air fryer with the highest wattage of air fryers in India, which is 1500 watts. The average time an air fryer needs to cook meal is about 20 minutes. During this 20 minutes, the air fryer heater will not be ‘ON’ all the time, meaning that there will be intervals when the heater coil will be switched OFF automatically by the thermostat temperature controller. An air fryer has a thermostat to control the temperature of the hot air and set it at the most ideal temperature for cooking tasty food.

It can be safely assumed that the air fryer heater coil power is ‘ON’ for half  the time during cooking and for the rest half of the time, the power to heating coil will be ‘OFF’. The heater of an air fryer consumes more than 90% of the power, the blower and other parts together consume less than 10% of the power. The fan of the Air Fryer does not stop during the full cooking time. In our example, because the electric consumption of the fan is negligible, we will ignore about power consumed by the fan when the heater is off.

So half of 20 minutes = 10 minutes = 10รท60 = 0.167 Hours . So the air fryer will consume 1500×0.167 =  250 watt hours which is 0.25 Kilo-Watt Hours or 0.25 units of electricity per air fryer cooking cycle of 20 minutes. An air fryer cooking time with 20 minutes is only reached on rare occasions, most of the recipes for air frying takes only about 10 to 15 minutes. Thus the electricity used by an air fryer is 0.25 units. In case you do 2 air frying cooking, the maximum electric power consumed by the air fryer will only be 0.5 unit of electricity in a day.

The Air Fryer in the example given above is the one with 1500 watts power, but most of the Air Fryers have a power rating which is less than 1500 watts and therefore an air fryers consumes less than half unit of electricity in a day.

Advantages of using an Air Fryer

The main advantage of Air fryer cooking is that using air fryer for cooking is very easy. Even though air fried food contains very little oil, it still tastes great. This is because the outside of the food is quickly fried and sealed with the fast moving hot air around the food and the food cooks in its on juices retaining all the flavors. The air fried food is crispy on the outside and tender, soft and juicy inside.

Using an air fryer to cook is healthy because only very little oil is required when frying in an air fryer and this leads to a healthy diet. Cooking in an air fryer is easy, makes tasty food and is a healthy way of cooking. 

The air fryer uses just very little oil, for example potato chips made in an air fryer contains 80% less oil than potato chips made by conventional deep frying. The air fried potato chips tastes better and contains so much less calories that you can eat as much as you want. Also making the potato chips in an air-fryer is so easy.

The other major advantages of Air Fryers is the convenience of using an air fryer for frying. The cooking is done in a few minutes, you do not have to stand over the air fryer like when food is being deep fried in hot oil over a gas burner with your face just over the frying pan breathing in the oil fumes and burnt gases.

You can put the food for frying in an air fryer and you can go about your other work or just relax on a sofa. The automatic temperature control and the automatic timer on the air fryer makes sure the food is fried just right and the Air Fryer offs by itself. Even if the food is left inside the air fryer for a long time after the air fryer switches off, the food will not burn in an Air Fryer. This is because the air fryer has less specific heat to transfer to the food when the electric power is switched off. To explain it simply, the Electric Air Fryer parts do not store heat because the air fryer body parts are light weight. So once the main heating coil is turned off, there is no more heat in the body parts of the air fryer to burn the food inside.

What can you cook in an Airfryer?

Here in summary is what you can cook in an Air Fryer and what the advantages of cooking with an Air fryer are:

  1. Air Fries, bakes, grills and roasts food using very little oil like one or two tea spoons.
  2. Air Frying gives great tasting food, like deep frying without oil
  3. More and more airfryer recipes Indian, North and South indian recipes are coming out on youtube almost daily. So there are lot of new dishes to try out in an Airfryer.
  4. Can cook automatically by setting the cooking time and temperature
  5. The Air Fryer shuts off automatically and an alarm rings to tell you that the cooking is over.
  6. The Air Fryer is a very safe way of cooking, there is no danger of oil fires, hot oil splattering over you while putting food into hot oil.
  7. The Air Fryer is healthier not only with less oil, but also you do not breath in the burnt oil fumes like when your face is over the frying pan on a gas burner
  8. Air Fryer tray can be washed and Dishwasher safe for easy cleaning
  9. Most Air Fryers give a free Recipe Book with plenty of recipes.

Tips for using Air Fryer

These are some the important Air fryer usage tips

  1. When air frying smaller food items like French fries you should shake the air fryer basket once or twice during cooking. This ensures even cooking and prevents the food from sticking together.
  2. Should not overfill the air fryer basket, because this prevents hot air from circulating evenly over all of the food and will increase the cooking time. You will get better tasting food if the food is air fried in smaller batches.
  3. Try to get a sprayer which can spray oil all over the food before air frying. This way less oil will be used, the food will be evenly coated with less oil and you get better tasting air fried food.
  4. When air frying food on which you used bread crumbs, be sure that the bread crumbs are wet enough to stick to the food so as not to come off in the fast air flow around the food. If too dry, then bread crumbs can become airborne and may become burnt and cause excess smoke and may blocking the air filter in the air fryer. Wetting with beaten egg white liquid, the parts being coated with bread crumbs, is a good solution.

Air fryer recipe books

We have a list of the best free air fryer cook books available for download online as pdf files. These Airfryer recipes include airfryer vegetarian recipes. Please make use of them:

Here is a list of some of the best online Air fryer Indian recipes

These are some of the best Recipe books on Air Fryers that is available for purchase from Amazon.in

How to cook Indian food in air fryer

Since Indian cooking means frying the masalas first and then adding the ingredients, the ordinary static type air fryers cannot do this job. You need the special type of air fryers with a rotating paddle and a pan. Air fryers which can suit the Indian way of cooking are for example the DeLongi, Tefal and Halo Airfryers described in this page.

This is the general method of using an air fryer for Indian curry. First pour on the pan all the required oil for the curry and fry chopped onions till the onions turn transparent or brown to your liking. The Air Fryer is then stopped and the lid opened to add the required spices and masalas. Then again the air fryer lid is closed and air fried for about a minute till the masala raw smell has gone. The airfryer has to be stopped again, the lid opened to add vegetable cubes or meat pieces with required salt.

The Air Fryer lid is now closed for the final time and the ingredients allowed to cook for about 5 minutes for vegetables or about 15 minutes for raw meat. The juices from raw meat is usually enough to cook the meat. In case the vegetables or meat requires more cooking, they can be pre-cooked in a pressure cooker and the air frying time adjusted accordingly. This is just a general guide line to use an air fryer to make a semi-dry Indian curry in a hurry. I have owned a Tefal Actifry Air Fryer for almost 2 years and use this air fryer cooking method to make delicious curries whenever my wife goes on holidays.

To see the best air fryers available in India visit our page Best air fryers for Indian Cooking

Advantage of Online buying of Home Appliances

Whatever Home Appliance you plan to buy, it is best to first do an online research about all available types and models on the leading online retailers in India, namely Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal. The advantage of first doing an online research about products you plan to buy is that you get to see all the available models of the product and you get to compare prices online. After this you can go around to the showrooms and do window shopping.

You should then decide to buy from the cheapest and most reliable source. When buying online, you can be sure that you will not get fake products and you are assured of after sales service. This is because the giant on-line retailers arrange for delivery to your house directly through the manufacturers of the product. Due to the high volume of business from the big online retailers, all manufacturers will make sure that any delivery on behalf of the big online retailers are of the best quality and that after sales service is provided on a priority basis.

If ever you have any problems, then you can go back to these online retailers and complain. All of these big online sellers have a reputation to keep and they always make sure that all complaints are promptly solved.

Advantage of buying AC, Fridge, Washing Machine, etc. online

Buying online fridges, washing machines, dishwashers and other major kitchen appliances is now the better option in India, just like it is in the USA and other advanced countries. There are several advantages of buying online. First of all, you get unbeatable bargain prices. Secondly, you get new and genuine products. Other benefits include no interest EMI payments, able to return the product for a full refund if not satisfied, etc.

Just to give you an example, below are some of the benefits Amazon India, the leading global online retailer, offered in India during their last sale. The same deals are not always available, but it is a good idea to check this link to the special offers page on Amazon.in India website.

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Link to Amazon.in deals
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