There are great air fryers for less than $100 out there, though they’ll be smaller and offer fewer features. If you’ll only be making an occasional batch of french fries or just want to experiment using an air fryer as a beginner-or if you’re only feeding one or two and don’t need a high-capacity machine-you can get away with a smaller, cheaper air fryer. The absolute best air fryers sell for $200 or more, but that high price gets you an array of useful extras and design features in addition to impressive performance. It depends on how and how much you plan to use it! To feed a large family including big fans of crispy, crunchy foods, you’ll need a high-end model with lots of power and a large capacity. It’s sort of like a small but mighty convection oven. Air fryers use a (typically electric-powered) heating element to rapidly heat the air in the cooking chamber and then imitate the thermodynamics of deep frying by using a fan to circulate the hot air and cook the food much more evenly than a traditional oven.

The secret behind deep frying is submerging food in hot oil: Oil is a really good conductor of heat, which makes things cook at the rapid speed needed for good crunch, while being completely surrounded by oil heats the food evenly from all sides at once. Shaking the basket periodically during cooking can help keep individual items from sticking together, but if there’s too much stuff in there, you just won’t get perfect results. The major difference from baking in a traditional oven is that you need to leave lots of room between food items if the air fryer is overfilled, you won’t get good crispy results.

(Depending on the particular recipe and your particular model of fryer, you may need to preheat first.) Air fryer baskets and racks are generally made with lots of perforations or a mesh texture, which allows for good air circulation and doesn’t trap moisture. Pretty much the same way you use a toaster oven: Set the temperature, put food in, close the door, and let it cook for the recommended time.

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