Air Fryer worth it at all for someone with severe ME?

I've been brave and put this public because I think it is (hopefully) noting the difficulty/cul-de-sac with these little things that might help others who perhaps don't realise the limitations of severe ME, or that many with it live alone etc.

Many people talk about air fryers. They say they are really 'easy'. Has anyone who is severe or who has been severe tried one as they seem unaccessible to me even on a good day, but don't want to be doing myself out of something that could be really useful if some of them are indeed 'easier'. Have I just not realised something about how you can just shove certain things in that might need more with some other way of cooking?

All the reviews say they are 'easy to clean' (and I'm thinking only if it all goes in the dishwasher as I can't do any wiping etc)

Are they easy with any lifting of things like the drawer bits etc?

If I were to even on a good day be able to use this then there would need to be dishes that could be produced genuinely fast as whilst I have something in the kitchen I can lie back on I can only do this for a short time and it is useless if I'm having to schlep a distance away to rest while I wait. So are dishes suddenly cooked much faster than they might?

It feels like most would land in the twilight zone of not batch cooking and just forget about for a long time, but also not fast enough you aren't hanging around?

Also the cognitive load of learning how to use something new seems a huge amount for me - has anyone else severe tried and found there is even a small selection of things they can work out (even with help of someone reading things for you) as many things you can only do when feeling OK because the timings are 'embedded' from e.g. microwaving for years etc? and then the idea of if you have to buy different things because 'recipes' would need different components?

 

Ha! and I wondered whether it was worth noting that a shortcut I often end up having to use with even simple, but often-used 'tech' (not even very high tech) is basically buying something similar to what I've been using before with things like phones (has to be same brand and not a vastly different layout), microwave (just too essential for me to have a 'learning period'), and so on.

 

I have tried a few types, and have on occasion been severe.

Number one requirement - auto off - that is it turns itself off when the time expires (number 2 requirement - must have a timer )

Easy to clean means almost impossible unless you spend up to 30 minutes every single time it's used.

I've had the old style philips (I think) halo air fryer - this is a rotating drum at an angle so as to agitate the food inside and auto off meaning that simple airfryer food (sausage and chips) could be put in, with a little oil, it turned on for 30-40 minutes, and when its finished it beeps and turns off. Convenient for those semi conscious days where you don.t feel like burnt food or kitchens. Impossible to fully clean but can keep going for years.

So reliable and did such a good job that they were discontinued in favour of a model that wasn't self stirring.

The Tefal equivalent, rotary, self stirring, sounds like a jet powering up according to review videos that don't mask the sound. And it isn't auto off

I've tried an air fryer oven, 2 in fact, and can categorically say, well shout really, as they are quite loud, that their claims of being easy to clean are bare faced lies.

I then tried the market leader, according to their marketing anyway - a twin basket ninja. cooked 2 lots of chips in it and returned it. Too big, too noisy, and according to the instructions far too fragile. A device for people with families (despite being barely big enough to put a medium sized chicken in a basket) who either have huge kitchens, with huge cupboards, and who have decent noise cancelling headphones, or a reallyyyyyy big kitchen. Chips weren't all that great either.

I've now got a philips 3000 series airfryer. Not quiet, not great at chips (but I have an oil fryer for chips), pretty good at baked potatoes, warming up pies. It has auto off but doesn't self stir. Which means I have to get up and shake stuff every 10 or so minutes. This I would not have been able to do while severe.

It's the easiest to clean that I've had, but it still needs thoroughly cleaning, by hand, using dishwasher tablets inna sink, every few uses, and that's just using it for baked pots and pies/pasties - I used it to reheat/crisp up a bit of chicken last week and whole thing needed cleaning - dishwasher tablet, super hot water, sponge, soft nylon crevice brush.

Airfryers, used to be good 10 years ago, for severe pwME, who didn'y mind a bit of old oil on them after a while.

Now, I couldn't recommend one, or even a type, that would be suitable.

 

My cousin, who has no disabilities, had much the same experience as @Wonko.

She gave it away and bought a tabletop combi-oven that microwaves, grills, and has all the different functions of a conventional fan oven—it's just smaller and more economical for a single person to run. She says it's much quieter and a lot less messy.

The disadvantage is that they're expensive, but they probably last several times as long as an air fryer. I left a 14-year-old one in my previous house when I moved in 2018, and the neighbour who bought the house was still using it when I called in to see her a few months back.

 

I have an air fryer and to avoid having to clean it after each use (no dishwasher) I place aluminium foil in the basket to about 3/4 the way up the side to hold any fats from dripping down below. I say 3/4 to avoid possible contact with anything electrical in the top.
Sometimes it leaks depending on how thick/strong the aluminium foil is but it has significantly cut down on the cleaning.
I love the fact with air fryers that once you know the time for a particular food item you can switch it on and just walk away

 

♥

@Wonko your posts are just superstar every time x

 

Thank you, and in particular for highlighting the noise and @Wonko too, as I hadn't even thought of this!

 

Thanks @Kitty sounds like it's worth a peek at these

 

Thanks @John Mac I love the top tip, anything to avoid cleaning piling up makes it a 'top' one for me !

 

Air fryers have fans.

Fans can lift anything in a small enclosed space that isn't well held down.

Sort of a hovercraft effect.

Lifting things involves them going up, towards the fan, and elements.

Foil conducts electricity.

If you will be weighting things down then the paper airfryer inserts are safer.

The silicon inserts more so.

But.....airfryers rely on the holes in the basket to move air through, in order to air fry stuff.

Anything that blocks these holes reduces the efficiency and ability of them to cook stuff evenly.

I've tested this with the paper inserts and the results are inferior to the bare basket.

Foil can also muck up their ability to detect the temperature, a useful feature for those who like their cooking appliances to remain unmelted. I have no idea why this would be so but I have seen this in other small ovens a 50-70C higher temp with foil in the base (which would not be spotted if I didn't have an oven thermometer inside). 300C in an oven rated to 240C is not really all that safe.

(Sorry, I could ignore people saying they did such a thing but it seemed unwise not to inform of the reasons why it's not a great idea when someone is saying that's a great idea, I'll try that.)

 

always happy to hear expertise @Wonko

 

Is it still expertise if it's just me living far too long, at the same time as making a lot of 'mistakes'?

 

I was reminded of this thread when I looked in my junk mail folder tonight and found an email from Robert Dyas suggesting buying an air fryer microwave oven! https://www.robertdyas.co.uk/kitche...ppliances/small-cooking-appliances/air-fryers They have some incredibly good-seeming deals on at the moment (Black Friday, I presume). Other retailers are of course available ...

 

All I can offer is my experience rather than advice but about a year ago I was gifted a secondhand 1-2 person Instant Air Fryer and it is brilliant for me. Everything that I used to grill/roast/fry can be done in this machine for half the time and cost in electricity compared to before. It produces really good, tasty results and I love it. It can go in the dishwasher and I find I have less washing up than using roasting tins etc.

On the down sides it is quite noisy and the size would not allow much batch cooking. You do have to shake/turn things as they are cooking.

 

I had an air fryer for about a year but did not get on with it. It was one my goddaughter had been given by the manufacturer in the hope she would promote it in her food videos. My goddaughter used it succesfully everyday while she was living here, but I did not get my head fully around how it worked so it always felt a bit like chance when I set it going. However, the fact that it stopped itself was useful for those times I fell asleep or forgot I was cooking. After my goddaughter moved out it was a bit fiddly to clean so I usually left it for my PA to sort if she had any time left over for cleaning, usually on one of my bad days. My kitchen needs redoing and I am short on worktop space so when I gave it away I was glad to get some worktop back.

I now use what my cousin calls a ‘Czech pot’. I don’t know if it has a more widely understood name. It is very simple, a largish pan with an electric heating element in the lid. It just has two settings, on and off, which is well within my cognitive capacity, though sometimes I do forget about it, until the smell of charcoal alerts me. Usually I cook things in a foil tray or wrapped in cooking foil and it will take up to a medium sized chicken. My cousin uses hers for baking cakes too. I had an AGA in my last house so I am used to cooking with little control over temperature.

The pan will go into the dish washer. The big disadvantage is that the lid is quite heavy and the heating element it means the underside is very hot when open, so there is a risk of burning yourself on it if you don’t have somewhere to put it down out of the way. I usually only cook one thing at a time so can put it down on my electric hob when getting food out, but when my goddaughter was using the kitchen as well this made it only usable when she wasn’t in the kitchen. My cousin, aged 102, swears by hers but she has a large kitchen so she can dedicate her central island to it having somewhere to put the lid when it is first opened well away from risk of anyone brushing against it.

[added - I use my Czech pot with about the same frequency as my microwave]

 

My diet's based almost entirely on batch cooked food—curries, stews, chilli, pörkölt, tagine, ragù, etc. I've hesitated to include one of my cooking methods because it would be unsafe in some homes.

But here goes anyway, because people have common sense. I have a small, portable induction hob from IKEA that plugs into an ordinary three-point socket and can accommodate a 7-litre steel casserole dish. I also have concrete floors in my bungalow, covered with industrial porcelain tiles.

When I want to batch-cook something that needs a lot of stirring, I put the hob on the tiles a foot and a half away from my wooden armchair, and cook it there. I can reach to stir it by squirming to the edge of the seat and leaning forward, and I can watch TV or whatever whilst it's cooking (it takes at least two to three hours to do such a big batch). The benefit is that I don't have to get up from sitting, or remain standing whilst I stir.

When it's finished I cut the power via the switch on the extension cable and leave it to cool where it is. I only move the pot when the food's no longer hot enough to burn.

It works so well that I'm even thinking about getting a second portable hob, as I usually cook 2 x 7-litre pans of food at once. And on a concrete floor, in a house with no children and a cat that can be excluded from the room, it doesn't seem much more risky to me than using the stovetop.

 

Very happy with my air fryer. Mine can go in the dishwasher. You do have to turn/shake things though. You can’t just put it on and walk away or the results end up uneven.

The big lifesaver for me has been my instant pot however. With this you can truly toss everything in and walk away. It saved my life when I was severe because cooking on the stove would have been impossible and unsafe.

 

I can’t remember where/why now but got the impression from somewhere you might have tried the Octopus thing where they say you ‘get free electricity at certain times’ (but there’s more to it than that) - is that me putting 2+2=5?