Forget the Grill. This Countertop Equipment Is Better Even During a Heat Wave
Grilling is great — until it’s 90 degrees outside and you’re standing over an open fire. Cooking indoors is not always the best option: an oven turns your kitchen into a swimming pool and using a gas range with closed windows can harm indoor air quality.
A powerful air fryer eliminates both problems. These compact appliances cook faster, use less energy than a conventional oven and generate a fraction of the heat — meaning you spend less time in a hot kitchen waiting for dinner.
To see how much of a difference it makes, I tested the air stove against the oven, cooked the same meals, and measured how much each one warmed my kitchen. The results were not close, and confirmed what I suspected: an air fryer is one of the best tools to have in the summer, next to ice makers and blenders.
I ran the numbers, and the air fryer wins
A heat wave requires some smart thinking to keep the home cool and the air fryer is my ticket to getting through those hot summer days without going hungry. To see if air conditioners i’m in the summer cooking hall of fame, doing tests to measure how hot the oven is in the kitchen compared to the air fryer.
Popular air conditioners are what they are designed to be, especially when it’s hot.
Here’s how hot the oven made my kitchen
The air fryer turns up juicy chicken thighs in less than 20 minutes.
For a real-world difference, I roast chicken thighs in my KitchenAid wall oven (less than 10 years old) and 4-quart pod-style air fryerfollowing are two popular recipes from a well-known cookbook. I tested the temperature before, during and after to see how much difference each machine made.
My Brooklyn apartment kitchen is on the small side, but it’s not closed off and opens up everywhere. I kept the windows closed to check, even though recent studies show that cooking with natural gas in a closed kitchen can be dangerous to health.
I find fewer and fewer reasons to turn on the oven these days.
A standard oven recipe called for roasting the chicken at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Because of its small chamber, the air fryer recipe only required 20 minutes of cooking at the same temperature. An air fryer only takes about a minute to reach temperature, while an oven takes more than five minutes.
An ambient thermometer was all I needed to test how hot a gas oven could make the kitchen.
I put a standard thermometer in the middle of the kitchen — about 5 feet from the stove — at counter height. I read before the oven or air fryer is turned on. I took another reading during the cooking time and the last one at the end. Between two sessions, I wait for the kitchen to return to resting temperature before starting the next one.
Ovens may have more energy than most air fryers, but they also heat the kitchen at a higher clip.
The oven made my kitchen 10 degrees hotter than the air fryer
Halfway through cooking (15 minutes), the oven turned up the temperature in my kitchen 15 degrees from 71 F to 88 F. After 10 minutes of air-cooking at 375 F, the temperature in my kitchen had risen. Only 5 degrees F, from a pleasant 72 F to 77 F. You can feel the heat coming from the stove if you are close enough, but not enough to change the temperature of the kitchen too much.
Read more: Here’s How to Keep Your Kitchen Cool (and Lower Your Energy Bill) During a Heat Wave
Not only did the air conditioner cause a small heat spike, but I only needed to run it for about 20 minutes, with one minute of heat time. The oven took 30 minutes to cook the chicken and 6 minutes to preheat.
Using an air fryer will reduce energy bills
Even modern ovens use much more energy than air fryers.
During a heat wave, your air conditioner you are already working hard. Heating the kitchen with your oven will make them work harder, using more energy to bring the room back to the temperature you want. For AC to make the difference for one 20 or 30 minute oven cooking session, it may not be the perfect budget. Spreading that out over time or longer cooking sessions and using the oven during the hotter months can have real financial consequences. To find out more about this, read my detailed breakdown How much does an oven cost to operate than an air fryer.
What can you do in an air fryer?
Air fryer roasted chicken is dynamite and takes less time than in a large oven.
An air fryer can do almost any cooking task that an oven can, although air fryers are usually smaller than wall ovens so you can’t cook a lot at once.
I have been considering the air stove a lot this year. I found the joy of cooking whole chickens in the air cell, salmon fish and even bacon cheeseburgers. The air fryer goes well beyond its reputation for cooking crispy wings as well French fries. You can make dinner party-level recipes in an air fryer without breaking a sweat, literally.
Hungry for more? Learn how to do it deep clean your air fryer in three easy steps and see how little power it uses a wall oven.
Steps You Can Take Right Now To Avoid An Overheated Phone
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much energy does a fridge save compared to a wall oven?
Can an air fryer make any recipe in the oven?
An air fryer can make almost any recipe a wall oven can, although it may not make the same serving size. Air fryers are smaller than ovens so they need to cook smaller batches of food — but they still contain more heat and use less overall energy than ovens when calculating the same serving sizes.
