Air Fryer Vs Toaster Oven: The Core Differences
If you are confused about choosing one kitchen appliance between air fryer vs. toaster oven, keep reading this post to find out the right criteria for your needs. You can easily cook with these modern supporting types of equipment.
Both these devices have relatively similar uses and are very convenient for kitchen work. There is much controversy about which appliance is more efficient in cooking. But the answer will depend on each persons needs.
How Does A Toaster Oven Work
A toaster oven has two heating elements that emanate dry heat. One heating element is fixed on the top of the oven and the second one at the bottom.
Depending on the oven setting these heating elements adjust the inside temperature. When broiling, the upper heating element works to give a perfect melted top to dishes like a casserole or a pizza.
The lower heating element works when you set the toaster oven for baking or toasting.
To get the full out of a toaster oven, check the user manual thoroughly and only then start your baking or broiling journey.
Like any other kitchen appliance, toaster ovens have pros and cons. So, heres some more about these little machines:
Even Our Reporters Who Test Air Fryers Don’t Really Like Them
Our job is to tell you what to buy, and in some instances, we’re assigned to review products we ourselves would never buy. We still consider, test, and review these products with every bit of the respect we give all products and services. At the end of the day, you’re going to buy what you’re going to buy and that’s that. We respect your choice.
But the kindest thing our reporters, Jen Gushue and James Brains, who have tested dozens of the things, have to say about air fryers is this: “The results are more like oven roasting at a high heat still a delicious end result, but you won’t fool anyone into thinking you just pulled those chicken wings out of a deep fryer.”
Essentially, an air fryer is a convection toaster that doesn’t toast, which is absurd in my book.
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Pros And Cons Of Air Fryers Compared To Toaster Ovens
When it comes to the air fryer vs convection toaster oven debate, both appliances have some advantages and limitations. Here are some significant pros and cons to assist you in making an informed decision.
- Air fryers do not have a viewing window to check the doneness of your food. Whereas convection ovens let you watch the food when it is cooking.
- In comparison to a convection oven, air fryers are loud and may reach up to 65 decibels in sound. This sound is similar to a vacuum cleaner.
- Air fryers are expensive when compared to convection ovens.
- You will need less counter space to store an air fryer. On the other hand, a convection oven will need the whole countertop or a cupboard.
- Depending upon what you cook, the crumbs inside the air fryer may get tricky to clean. Other than that, it has a no-mess nonstick basket that does not have residual food. When cleaning a convection oven, you just need to clean the pans.
- You can quickly preheat the air fryers, while the convection oven may take more time due to its large size. Even if you invest in a large air fryer, it will heat quickly as it has insulation.
- You may use a convection oven instead of toaster ovens as they come with a crisper tray.
- Air fryers come with accessories such as additional racks, rotisserie spits, and skewers.
- There are specific recipes that can be cooked in air fryers and may not work in conventional ovens.
Air Fryer Method Of Cooking
The air fryer has a removable bucket which has a handle that houses a basket. The basket sits on top of a drip tray.
To start the cooking process, you are required to place your items in the basket, and then push the bucket back inside.
The air fryer has a timer and temperature controls to allow precise cooking.
Since heating elements are located at the top of the air fryer, you might need to shake the basket regularly to ensure that your food cooks evenly especially if they are stacked together to allow the air to cook from all sides.
Also Read: Best Budget Toaster Ovens
Don’t Miss: Philips Rapid Air Technology Air Fryer
Air Fryer Chicken Wings
These Air Fryer Chicken Wings are one of my all-time favorite things to make in the air fryer. So easy, crispy, and delicious. I cooked these wings with no added seasonings to show the comparisons.
Amount: 1.83 lbs of chicken wings placed in each device.
Preheat: I preheated each machine to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes before adding wings.
- Basket: Took 27 minutes to get the desired color and crispiness on these wings.
- Oven: Took 38 minutes to get the desired color and crispiness on these wings. Please note that the wings in the photo above, on the right, shows the oven wings pulled at 27 minutes. They were much lighter than the wings in the basket, so I added them back in until they were browner.
Winner: The basket. The wings were done much faster. However, once I increased the time on the oven wings, I could not tell a difference.
What Is Air Frying Anyway And How Does It Work
Despite what it sounds like, air frying doesnt actually fry your food. Instead, air fryers are mini convection ovens that use fans to rapidly circulate hot air, cooking food faster and more evenly than a standard oven does.
Convection has been around for more than a century. The first commercially sold convection ovens were developed by the W. L. Maxson Corporation in the 1940s as a way to reheat frozen food for airplanes. And they worked much the same as todays air fryers and convection toaster ovens do: As the fan circulates hot air around the food, it crisps the outside in a way that mimics deep frying. But your tastebuds will tell you that air-fried food isnt anything like traditionally deep-fried food in flavor and texture.
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Can You Air Fry With A Convection Toaster Oven
For years weve used the convection fan on our Breville Smart Oven Pro plus a wire rack inserted into a sheet pan to cook all manner of crispy vegetarian foods with great results.
If youve got a convection toaster oven that you love, upgrading for one single feature probably isnt going to be worth it.
To help you try out air fryer recipes in your toaster oven weve put together this post with tips on how to air fry with a convection toaster oven.
You may find that your current toaster oven does a great job air frying. If not, you can always come back and read the rest of this article!
How Easy Are They To Clean
Modern appliances are becoming increasingly more straightforward to clean, thanks to non-stick products, coatings, and removable parts.
Both of these appliance styles are relatively straightforward to clean, though we have to give the edge to the air fryer as all the parts that come into contact with food are removable and dishwasher safe.
This can be the case with some convection toaster ovens too, but the racks can be a lot larger and more fiddly to clean over the standard air fryer basket. Youll often find food particles getting stuck in the grid of the racks and baskets.
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Instant Vortex Plus 10 Quart Air Fryer Rotisserie And Convection Oven Air Fry Roast Bake Dehydrate And Warm
Instant Vortex Plus 10 Quart Air Fryer, Rotisserie and Convection Oven, Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Dehydrate and Warm is the best air fryer toaster oven, newest, biggest, and best Instant Pot yet.
It has all the features you love about the Instant Pot, plus it can air fry, roast, bake, dehydrate, and do so much more.
The 10 quart size is perfect for families or entertaining, and with its EvenCrisp Technology, you can get all the crunch and tenderness of deep frying with little to no oil. With its quick and even heating, you can cook multiple meals at once with ease.
And with its Adjustable Temperature feature, you can easily select temperatures from 95 to 400° F. The included accessories make it easy to get started right away just add your favorite recipes! So discover new favorites and prepare delicious meals with the Instant Vortex Plus 10 Quart Air Fryer, Rotisserie and Convection Oven.
Key Features
- The trays are so much easy to clean.
Cons:
- The buttons are sometimes finicky to press to get to work.
Can An Air Fryer Replace A Toaster
An air fryer can replace an oven toaster for those who do not use the oven toaster heavily. If you dont use your oven toaster for baking and broiling large batches of food and only for toasting bread, you can switch to an air fryer comfortably.
Additionally, an air fryer has functions that your toaster oven may not have like dehydrating. Still, you cannot broil or toast your bread in an air fryer, so it depends purely on your usage of the appliances.
Also Check: Seapak Clam Strips Air Fryer
Whats The Difference Between An Air Fryer And A Toaster Oven
Actually, when talking about the typical air fryer and toaster oven, there are some pretty major differences,as follows:
Heat source
Yes, both create hot air! But how? A toaster oven uses a pretty basic form of heat, a simple strip of heating elements placed in the unit. Very basic toaster oven models have only one set of heating elements at the top, whereas some more fancy ones will have both at the top and bottom.
An air fryer also has a pretty standard heating element, although it is usually stronger than in a toaster oven and in a coil form. The thing that makes a big difference is the powerful fan found in the air fryer. This fan will push and circulate the hot air around the air fryers cooking compartment, and this is how the food inside is air fried.
If you want a toaster oven more in line with an air fryer, you could buy a slightly more expensive one with the convection function . This still wont be as powerful or offer the fried food style of the air fryer, though.
Method of cooking
Most typical toaster ovens only have a small selection of cooking methods available. Usually they can bake, broil, roast and grill . Whereas an air fryer can do these types of cooking, as well adding air frying and even dehydrating to the mix. This makes the air fryer a much more flexible kitchen accessory than the typical toaster oven.
I also feel that my air fryer is much better at roasting than a toaster oven. Try roasting a whole chicken in there, for example!
Speed of cooking
Also Great: Philips Premium Airfryer Hd9741/96
*At the time of publishing, the price was $250.
The Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 is the best pod-shaped air fryer weve tested. Its a far less versatile appliance than the Cuisinart convection toaster oven, but its smaller footprint may make it ideal for tiny kitchens with limited counter space. Smaller households that plan to make only one or two portions of food at a time may also prefer this model. Compared with other pod-shaped air fryers we tested, the Philips cooked food the most evenly, aside from the occasional soggy french fry on average, it cooked faster than most other models we tried and with better results. Like all pod-shaped air fryers, this Philips model isnt good for baking or making toastits fan is too powerful and produces overcooked, irregularly shaped cakes and wonky, unevenly browned toast. But if you dont plan to bake in it, we think its a suitable choice for cooking frozen snacks, smaller portions of meat and vegetables, or certain dishes you want extra crispy, like chicken wings or flautas.
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Are There Benefits To Air Frying Food
Even though your food doesnt taste deep-fried, air frying can still be fun, quick, and delicious. Below are a few of the reasons you might want to try it.
The Food Is Ready Faster. Some things are ready in half the time it would take in a traditional oven.
Theres Less Mess. Air frying is definitely easier, cleaner, and requires less attention than deep-frying with a big pot of hot oil.
Potential Health Benefits. People really like to tout air frying as healthier because youre using less oil. But the less oil aspect is more nuanced.
Yes, you are definitely going to use less than deep-frying. But you still need to toss your broccoli and Brussels sprouts with some oil otherwise youll turn them into a dry jerky.
Most frozen foods dont need extra oil. But the oil savings are not that significant for foods youd normally bake or roast in a traditional oven.
More Evenly Cooked Food. We touched on this earlier but cooking with convection results in crispy, tender, uniformly cooked food that tastes great.
What To Look For In A Hybrid Toaster And Air Fryer Oven
Since youre potentially going all-in on one machine, there are a few functions you want it to perform and perform well. For the purposes of this list, I took four main cooking functions into account: Air fry, broil, bake and toast. These, along with roast, are the oven duties the average home cook will rely on most. While some of these cookers sport dehydrate, proof, pizza and other niche cooking functions, most didnt, so I stuck to testing functions that were possible across all the hybrid ovens.
Air frying: This trendy term has nothing to do with frying but rather mimics the results of deep-frying using super hot, fast-moving convection air for food thats crispy outside and moist inside. Having an air fry function was the baseline criteria for consideration on this list. You can air fry lots of things, but chicken wings and french fries are two popular options, so I employed them for testing.
Broiling: Im a big broiler person, especially for fish but also for things like mac and cheese, certain chicken recipes and anything else I want a crispy crust on top of. I find that ovens differ wildly in broiling ability so I wanted to see which of these ovens did it best.
Baking: Baking can mean a lot of things but when it comes to, lets say cookies and cupcakes, consistency is key. The sign of an oven that bakes well is simple: Will it hit the temperature you set it to and then stay there consistently throughout the bake?
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Learn All About Air Fryer
Basically, an air fryer can be defined as a compact-sized convection oven. It was created to replace the deep fryer if you want to eat delicious fried foods but dont want a lot of fat.
Although air fryers are available in different types, they all have the same operation mechanism: using convection air currents with high hot air to cook food. These hot air flows are continuously circulated by fans placed inside the machine at high speed to cook food quickly.
How Does It Work
An air fryer is essentially a small convection oven. By rapidly circulating hot air around the food, it crisps up the outside while keeping inside tender and juicy. When cooking French fries in an air fryer, for example, you get all the taste of deep-fried potatoes, but with only a fraction of the fat.
Air fryers circulate hot air using a mechanical fan. The fan is located near or above the heating element. As the hot air circulates through the frying basket, it cooks food from all sides at once.
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Air Fryer French Fries
These air fryer french fries are the reason I bought an air fryer in the first place. I used frozen french fries for this side by side comparison. I typically air fry french fries anywhere from 8-12 minutes depending on the type of fries and how thick cut they are.
Amount: .75 lbs of frozen shoestring french fries.
Preheat: Both the basket and the oven were preheated at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes. Then each was cooked at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until desired crispiness.
- Basket: The basket took 8 minutes to cook until desired crispiness.
- Oven: The oven took 13 minutes to cook until the desired crispiness.
- Winner: The basket, by a littleas it cooked a few minutes faster.
Which Is Better Air Fryer Or Air Fryer Toaster Oven
As we have all the facts before us, it would be right to say that Air Fryer toaster ovens do come with more perks than the pod air fryer. Thus, we could place our votes on the Air Fryer toaster ovens because they give you the benefits of an air fryer along with features of a regular toaster oven, hence making them pocket friendly as you only need to buy one appliance for multiple purposes which save you extra money and counter space
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Most Air Fryers Are Awkwardly Shaped And Sized
Consider how many batches it would take to cook for even just two, let alone four, in an air fryer. And while the footprint might be a little smaller, it won’t fit as neatly into a corner or beneath a cabinet in the way that a boxier, prettier, and usually stainless-steel convection toaster oven would.