Difference between air fryer and convection oven reddit

I already have a counter top convection oven. Will I see any difference in results with a dedicated air fryer?

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I'd say that an air fryer has a stronger fan and more concentrated heat. It does a better and faster job than my full size convection oven for crisping.

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If you can get a basket to put your food in instead of a tray, your results will be very close if not identical.

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do you have suggestions or an example?

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It's a LOT easier to clean an air fryer. :)

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I have both. Both great products but the air fryer definitely crisps things better and quicker

i used to work at williams sonoma so it was easy to tell what people were into in regards to food and cooking trends. one of the ones that never really fell off before i left was air frying. when you work there you also pick up a bunch of product knowledge.

i learned that air frying is pretty much a fan blowing hot air around. but isn’t that just convection? working at ws has made me very wary of gimmicks and fancy relabels for old tricks. is air frying one of them? this has been bothering me for years.

They are, in theory, the same. BUT, in their quality and speed of cooking, they are very different.

I own a Samsung convection oven/range that we've had for 5-6 years now and have put a lot of different food items through it. What I've noticed is that it cooks much more evenly than our 25 year old oven. Also, you have to adjust the cook temp/time just a bit due to the convection fan. The Samsung can't get really crispy wings no matter how hard I tried. Even using the 'baking soda' trick which takes a lot longer and we don't like the texture or taste of the soda on the wings.

Last year my wife purchased a Cosori air fryer for our RV. After cooking one batch of chicken wings, I loved it. The speed of cooking and the way it cooked the wings so crispy was leaps and bounds better than with our convection oven.

So... in summary, yes, air fryers and convection ovens share a lineage but that's about as far as you can take the comparison. We still use our big oven for things too large for the Cosori, like cakes and the turkey during Thanksgiving, but that's about it.

They serve different overlapping roles and each has their own benefits. It's often cheaper to get separate appliances for each purpose: an inverter microwave, convection toaster oven, bread toaster, basket air-fryer, etc.

Buy them all over time. First buy the ones you expect to use the most. You can get combinations that have multiple features, but usually they're more expensive and if one part breaks, you lose the use of all of them, and the replacement cost is much higher for combo units.

A $40 toaster, $120 inverter microwave, $60 convection toaster oven, and $60-100 basket air fryer is a far more functional set than a Toshiba 7-in-1 convection microwave for $379.99. If I had extremely limited space, I'd get the Toshiba combi, but it will never perform as well as the dedicated appliances that are best-of-breed or best-values.

Air-fryers are hyped because they're new and it's easier to sell someone something new than to replace something they already have. Basket air-fryers are generally a lot better at what they do than other appliances that can also cook the same foods, but they're a lot less versatile. Basket air-fryers are best at cooking small items quickly at higher temps for browning and crisping.

Considering how much more expensive it is to buy food at fast food shops, restaurants, and delivery services, almost any appliance that you use to avoid those costly services can save you a lot of money and be more convenient in the long run. A single large order of fries with one of those services is a lot more expensive than a 2-4 pound bag of frozen fries that could last you for days or weeks of meals.

Convenience is a major factor for most people. Air fryers are high on the convenience factor for great results quickly with low hassle.

Depends on what you mean by "conventional". An air fryer is specifically a smaller, souped-up convection oven. A convection oven has a fan that circulates air, which allows your food to get hotter and carries away moisture, both of which are helpful for achieving crispy exteriors. Not all conventional ovens are like this.

Note that I called air fryers "souped-up". A good air fryer takes the convection oven's crisping qualities and turns them up to 11, by getting even more air circulation around your food. It does this in a few ways. First, it uses a more powerful fan - at least relative to the size of the oven. The small size helps to get a more powerful air flow going - it's harder to get all the air in a large oven moving fast. Second, the fan is (typically) above the food which results in better and more direct air flow. In regular convection ovens, the fan is typically at the back, which does get the air moving but doesn't blow directly on the food so much (it tends to blow over, not at). Finally, air fryers typically place the food in a basket, which again maximizes air flow around the food, compared to the baking trays that you see in regular convection ovens. The basket also allows for easy tossing of things like french fries.

I should say, this is all true of good air fryers compared to typical convection ovens. But there's not a clear dividing line between them. Some high-end convection ovens might achieve similar air flow to a good air fryer, and you can buy special air-frying trays or baskets for a convection oven. And some lower-end air fryers really are just rebranded small convection ovens (with the fan at the back and trays rather than a basket), and not necessarily good ones. So you need to be careful about what you buy.

What is better an air fryer or a convection oven?

Can a convection oven replace an air fryer?

Why do I need an air fryer if I have a convection oven?

Is an air fryer a glorified convection oven?