Healthier Cooking With The Sarki Air Fryer

I've been eating healthier for a few years now (and actually lost weight in the process), but everyone around me was raving about air fryers and how great they are. So I tried one out for myself. 

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Now, we still have our old deep fryer even though we have not used it at all in 6 years or more. I just always made "fried" food in the oven. The only exception to that was when I would make homemade donuts. But even then, I would just fry them in a pan with some oil instead of getting out the fryer. 

I have heard that fryers now can cook pretty much anything, kind of like an instant pot. We also just recently got one of those as well, so I've spent the last few weeks testing both to see which one would be the superior kitchen appliance. I think it's a tie, though. The other great thing about an air fryer is that it saves on electricity bills, as it is one appliance that does all of the cooking for you. Instead of using multiple appliances and racking up the electricity bill, you can control the spending and have the Power to Choose the appliance that will save you time and money.

This air fryer is actually more of an oven because you don't just "fry" foods in it. You can actually bake a cake it among other things. It's much, much larger than I had expected as well. You can see in the photo that it hardly fits on our counter top. It did come with a flat wire rack, deep pan with "blade" that turn the food, a wire wrack for poultry, and a flat pan. They also provided an oven mitt that actually ended up matching my kitchen decor, which was awesome!

There's a nice LED display once you plug it in and turn it on. There is a preheat button along with buttons to set cook time and temperature, although temp only goes up to 400 degrees, which was a bit disappointing since a lot of things I make list 450 as the cook temp in the directions. There are preprogrammed times and temps for certain foods as well. You can't see it because it was blinking on and off, but the first one is actually the frozen fries option which cooks at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. 

I love the window on the door of the oven as well as a light so you can see your food cooking. It does make a ton of noise. Not too loud, but it's certainly not quiet either. And it will notify you when it's done preheating and cooking.

I experimented with it a little bit by digging everything out of my freezer that I had on hand to use in it. This included fries, chicken nuggets, and onion rings.

I wanted to really gauge time and temp on this thing, so I did half my fries in the conventional oven and half of them in the "air fryer oven". Nuggets and onion rings were done in the air fryer oven as well. This took forever it seemed. I have a family of 4 so when I make any of these things individually, I end up making an entire bag. You can only cook so much in the air fryer oven at a time. I attempted to put some in the pan at the bottom and some on the sheet at the same time to cook more at one time. This didn't really work the way I had wanted it too. When doing the onion rings this way, the ones on the tray were burnt before the ones in the pan were barely crisp. Fries did the same thing, and I didn't even bother to try the nuggets at that point, so I just cooked those in small batches on the tray. Those turned out fine.

I put the fries in my regular oven for the exact same time as I did the ones in the air fryer oven. I used the preprogrammed setting with these. You can see in the photo below, that both got browned, but not crisp. As a matter of fact, I ended up having to leave them in about 10-12 minutes longer than the preprogrammed setting of 20 minutes. When I do my fries in my regular oven, I put them in for 20 minutes, but I also have the oven set at 450 for those. I can't set the air fryer oven above 400. So the timing doesn't really work, unless you are doing a really small batch. Half a bag? Forget it. Quarter of a bag? Maybe.

A few days later, I tried tater tots. After my son's Kindergarten Orientation, we went home and had lunch. My daughter made herself some mac and cheese, but hubby and son wanted tater tots. So I used this as an opportunity to try out tater tots in a small batch in the air fryer oven.

I said heck with it, and put some in the pan, then put a few on the flat wire rack above the deep pan. I did set them at 400 degrees and 20 minutes using the pre programmed  "fries" option. Those turned out much better. Of course, once again, I was only doing about a quarter of a bag. The ones on the wire wrack were nice and crisp. The exact way we like them. The ones in the deep pan were less crisp, but they weren't soggy, so we still called that a win.

I have been meaning to bake a cake in this sucker, but haven't had the time to do it. Maybe even a gigantic cinnamon roll? Oh yes, I think that'll be my next project!

At any rate, here are my thoughts on this air fryer oven by Sarki:

• Great for small batch cooking/baking.
• Doesn't heat up your home like a regular oven, so perfect for warm weather cooking.
• If you have the space, it's wonderful for family and holiday dinners because you essentially have two ovens to cook multiple things in at once. If you have an instant pot, you now have THREE ovens! Think of the possibilities! 
• Price is a little up there, but WORTH IT just for the pros I mentioned above. 
• Cleans up much easier than a regular oven. 
• Safer than an instant pot (some people are afraid of pressure cooking), but does almost the same exact thing. 
• Cooks your favorite "fried" foods in a way that is much healthier than frying in oil.