To reduce household costs, many households in Northern Ireland have purchased air fryers.
Air fryers have become very popular in the UK because they can prepare fried foods using much less oil. The appliance reduces the need for excess fat by using hot air circulation to cook food. This means meals prepared in a fryer can contain less saturated fat and fewer calories.
As well as their health benefits, they are also advertised as being more energy efficient than an oven. And as people in Northern Ireland struggle with the cost of living crisis, air fryers promise to cook food faster, using less energy and leading to lower energy bills.
Read more: Northern Ireland energy bills: comparing costs after companies announce cuts
To cut her kitchen bills, Manchester Evening News reporter Katie McAuliffe tested an air fryer and an oven to see which is cheapest.
Her experiment used only one meal, so other dishes with different cooking times may produce different results. It also depends on how much you pay for your electricity and how big or efficient your air fryer or oven is. Katie writes…
With energy prices currently skyrocketing and the attitude that I should try to reduce my spending wherever possible, I have become increasingly curious and want to explore alternatives to my everyday energy consumption in the hope of finding cheaper ways to live.
I discussed the topic with my friend Ellie and she told me that according to her smart meter – which sends her daily graphs of her energy use and daily spending – she believes the most expensive time of an average day is mealtimes. So I set out to find the most cost-effective way to prepare food, whether in an air fryer or the oven.
To do this effectively, I enlisted the help of Ellie so I could use her handy smart meter to check the energy surge costs at the exact time I cooked using each of the appliances. Her energy supplier is Bulb, one of the UK’s leading green energy providers.
Looking back at the GSCE science test reminded me that I needed to control my variables so that this test was fair and accurate. I cooked the same dish, vegan cauliflower wings, at the same time of 12:30pm on two days. To ensure that the readings only reflected the energy used to cook our food, I made sure that no extra energy was used in the time surrounding the cooking.
After arriving at Ellie’s on day one, we prepped the cauliflower and set up her impressive Ninja air fryer. The original recipe called for 30 minutes in the oven, so we decided to halve that time and set the air fryer to 200 degrees for 15 minutes. The process was very quick, after putting the wings in the machine, all we had to do was press “go” and that was it. In hindsight, we could have run the air fryer even less time as the cauliflower wings were a little overcooked, but all in all, it was a success and the wings were delicious.
The smart meter graph later showed that the cost of running the air fryer to cook the cauliflower at 200 degrees for 15 minutes had been just 20p. Since the cost could easily have been reduced further by reducing the cooking time or using a lower heat to avoid the food burning easily, we both agreed that the air fryer was a quick and cost-effective way to cook.
The next day, we repeated the process, only this time we cooked in the oven. We set it at 200 degrees, the same temperature as the air fryer, and switched it to convection. It took 11 minutes for the oven to heat up, and then we cooked the cauliflower wings on a baking sheet for another 30 minutes.
The graph shows that the cost of using the oven for 41 minutes at 200°C is a whopping 42 pence, more than double the price of using the air fryer.
Results
Hot air fryer
Time: 15 minutes.
Taste: Delicious, but slightly dry and a little burnt.
Cost: 20p.
Oven
Time: 41 minutes.
Taste: Perfectly cooked and juicier than when prepared in the air fryer.
Cost: 42p.
Diploma
Katie concluded that the air fryer was the clear winner in both the cost and time categories.
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