@scienceofficer flung an interesting wee bomb in that nobody replied to.
I'm more interested in a pressure cooker tbh, soups and stews in shorter times sound very appealing. Have a hob one I've not found the courage to try.
Aldi have a pressure cooker/ air fryer appliance that looks promising.
We've has a Power Air Fryer XL for a few years. Use it 2-3 times a week, when turning the oven on is madness due to small quantity of food. Great for sausages. They will do a roast chicken and spuds, so I think that's the next challenge. It's effectively a mini fan oven.
I'll drop a power mnitoring plug on it next time to see what it uses over 20-25 minutes cooking time.
Does anyone own one of these Ninja "15 in 1" cookers?
A bit pricey but could save a lot electricity for me.
We have a cosori one, I was sceptical but now another convert. Just made myself some roast carrot, sweet potato and celeriac soup for lunch, roasting the veg in it. Makes way more sense for roasting small batches than using the main oven. Usually get great results from it.
Ok, seriously considering one of these, BUT we had one of the very early early Phillips air fryer, when they first came out and it was rubbish.
Then when we were living in the cabin whilst the house was being remodelled we had one of those instapot jobbies me that was only good for pasta meatball combos, too many dinner failures resulting in takeaway Chinese to recommend those do-it-all devices.
I’m more interested in a pressure cooker, but like most only have bad recollections as a young child of a molten hot dinner ending up on the ceiling. Does anyone use one here ? Recommend it?
Am intrigued by an air fryer, but do they really work for doing dinner for a family of four ?
I bought one of the Ninja combo air fryer/steamer/pressure cooker things.
It's excellent.
Way better than a basic "air fryer" thing I had previously.
Am intrigued by an air fryer, but do they really work for doing dinner for a family of four ?
Depends what your dinner is and of course the capacity you choose.
I've only had one a couple of weeks but I think it's absolutely mint.
There's 2 of us and we have a Cosori 4.7l model.
Not used the oven since we got it and it's made me much more interested in trying out recipes for now. I'm sure that novelty will fade but it's still very neat and handy over the oven.
I’m more interested in a pressure cooker, but like most only have bad recollections as a young child of a molten hot dinner ending up on the ceiling. Does anyone use one here ? Recommend it?
Used ours (stove top, 45 quid from Argos) a few times now and it is easy, unscary, and makes the most amazing stews in about 30 minutes.
Does anyone own one of these Ninja “15 in 1” cookers?
We do!
Missus bought it about a year ago it's sat in the corner taunting her now due to barely being used...
In fact I'm the only one to have attempted to use it, and it's actually not bad. it's major selling point (IMO) is the pressure cooker bit, it does a 'roast' chicken by basically pressure cooking it, then air-drying to crisp up the skin it's pretty fast. It does good potato wedges/chips by replacing the par-boiling bit with pressure cooking.
The trouble is the little booklet they lob in the box gives minimal guidance on recipes/cooking times, so you'll probably have to resort to Google (especially when you MIL loses it)...
And of course the boss is affraid of it because she didn't realize it was a pressure cooker when she ordered it, so now she delegates it's operation, and leaves the room if you go near it to shout "be careful!" from another room, even if you're not actually using the pressure cooker bit...
Otherwise it's one of the best kitchen ornaments we own...
How do these compare to a combi-microwave oven? Obviously the combi won’t do chips, but it does do stews, soups, pasta bakes, jacket potatoes etc. very well.
It's basically a mini cylindrical grill/oven/pressure cooker. You can do various things, I've not tried doing a jacket potato, but I suppose you might be able to.
It's kind of tricky to do multiple things in it i.e. fish and chips at the same time which is kind of a drawback but then a microwave wouldn't be much better at that.
If you have decent capacity, you can actually get little wire 'shelves' that give you another layer to cook different things on.
Best not to pack them out too much though.
They probably don't make quite so much sense if there is a lot of you I think. You'll probably stick to an oven.
Brilliant for smaller stuff and chips obvs.
So I joined the club the other day with a digital control 6.7l air fryer from Costco* for the princely sum of £43.
Blimey..... It's rather good.
Even with the large size I don't think it would do a meal for 4 adults but for the two of us it's a good alternative to firing up the oven for some stuff.
I've only tried a couple of things but the sausage (15 mins) and hash browns (7 mins) it cooked this morning were very impressive.
I certainly didn't go in to buy one, but so far I'm glad I did.
* Normal price £52.
People were going nuts for them and there was a limit of two per account.
One woman was angry because they weren't allowing her to buy 4!
Interesting.
I presume these vunder devices are liberally coated in perflourocarbons and they operate at pretty high temperatures?
@Scienceofficer would be most interested to know more. Are you referring to non-stick coating which presumably these machines have? Thanks.
