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Grilling is great—until it’s 90 degrees outside and you’re standing over an open flame. Cooking indoors isn’t always the best option: an oven turns your kitchen into a sauna and running a gas range with the windows closed Damage to indoor air quality.
The mighty Air fryer It avoids both problems. These compact appliances cook quickly, Use less energy than a conventional oven and generates a fraction of the heat – which means you spend less time in the oven Hot kitchen Waiting for dinner.
To see how much of a difference it makes, I tested the air fryer head-to-head against the oven, cooked the same food, and measured how much it warmed my kitchen. The results weren’t even close, and they confirmed what I suspected: an air fryer is one of the best summer gadgets you can have, next to it. Ice makers and Mixers.
I checked the numbers, and the air fryer wins
A heat wave requires creative thinking to keep the house cool, and an air fryer is my ticket to getting through the hot summer days without going hungry. To find out if Air fryers It belongs to the Summer Cooking Hall of Fame, and tests were conducted to measure how much an oven heats a kitchen compared to an air fryer.
Fashionable air fryers are all you need, especially when the weather is hot.
Here’s how hot the oven gets in my kitchen
The air fryer prepares delicious chicken thighs in less than 20 minutes.
To find the real-world differences, I roasted chicken thighs in my KitchenAid wall oven (less than 10 years old) and in the oven 4 liter air fryerfollowing two famous recipes from a well-known cooking site. I tested the temperature before, during and after to see how much of a difference each machine made.
My apartment’s kitchen in Brooklyn is on the small side, but it’s not enclosed and opens to the rest of the apartment. However, I kept the windows closed for testing Modern studies Show that cooking with natural gas in an enclosed kitchen can pose a health risk.
I’m finding fewer and fewer reasons to turn on the big oven these days.
The standard oven recipe called for roasting the chicken at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Because of its smaller chamber, this air fryer recipe only requires 20 minutes of cooking at the same temperature. An air fryer only takes about a minute to come to temperature, while an oven takes over five minutes.
All I need is an ambient thermometer to test how hot a gas oven is in the kitchen.
I placed a standard ambient thermometer in the middle of the kitchen – about 5 feet from the stove – at counter height. Take a reading before turning on your oven or air fryer. I took another reading halfway through the cooking time and the last reading at the end. Between the two sessions, I waited for the kitchen to return to a comfortable temperature before starting the next session.
Ovens may have a larger capacity than most air fryers, but they also heat the kitchen at a higher temperature.
The oven made my kitchen 10 degrees hotter than the air fryer
Halfway through the recipe (15 minutes), the oven turned up the temperature in my kitchen 15 degrees 71°F to 88°F is very hot. After 10 minutes of cooking with the air fryer at 375°F, the temperature in my kitchen rose Only 5 degrees F, from 72°F to 77°F. You can feel the heat from the air fryer if you stand close enough to it, but it’s not enough to noticeably change the temperature of the kitchen.
Read more: Here’s how to keep your kitchen cool (and lower your energy bill) during a heatwave
Not only did the air fryer cause a slight overheating, but I also needed to run it for about 20 minutes, with a minute of preheat time. The oven takes 30 minutes to cook the chicken and 6 minutes to preheat.
Using an air fryer will reduce your energy bills
Even modern ovens consume much more energy than an air fryer.
During a heat wave, your air conditioner He works really hard. Heating your kitchen with your oven will only make it work harder, and use more energy to bring the room back to the desired temperature. For the air conditioner to make up the difference for a 20 or 30 minute oven cooking session may not be exactly budget-friendly. Spread that out over time or for longer cooking sessions and using the oven during the hotter months can have real financial ramifications. To learn more about this, read my exact details How much more does an oven cost to run than an air fryer?.
What can you make in an air fryer?
Roasting chicken in the air fryer is dynamite and takes less time than it does in a large oven.
An air fryer can handle almost any cooking task that an oven can, although air fryers are usually smaller than wall ovens so you can’t cook as much at once.
I’ve been messing around with the air fryer a lot this year. I have discovered the joy of cooking Whole chicken In the air fryer, Salmon fillets And even Bacon with cheese. The air fryer goes beyond its reputation for cooking crispy wings French fries. You can make dinner recipes in the air fryer without breaking a sweat, literally.
Hungry for more? Learn how Deep clean your air fryer In three easy steps and see How much less energy Used from wall oven.
Frequently asked questions
How much energy does an air fryer save compared to a wall oven?
Can an air fryer make any recipe that an oven can make?
An air fryer can prepare almost any recipe that a wall oven can, although it may not make the same serving size. Air fryers are smaller than ovens and therefore need to cook smaller batches of food — but they still contain more heat and use less total energy than ovens when accounting for the same serving sizes.
