Hate Heat but Love Cooking? This Is the Ultimate Kitchen Appliance for Hot Weather

CNET

a day ago

It's not summer yet but it sure feels like it. If you're hungry but not interested in taking an impromptu sauna, there's a new contender for the title of "Summer Cooking MVP," and it's not the grill. It's that little countertop overachiever: the air fryer. Yep, the air fryer is back at it -- cranking out crispy dinners while keeping your kitchen (and electric bill) from melting down.
Don't get me wrong -- I love grilling. There's something primal and satisfying about cooking over open flames with a cold drink in hand. But when it's 90 degrees and the sun is aggressively trying to roast me, not just the chicken, I start rethinking things. And don't even mention the oven -- unless you're into sauna-core living and sending your AC into overdrive.
You don't need to run a convection oven with an extension cord, as one Reddit user admitted to doing. The air fryer is able to perform many of the tasks you'd need the oven for, and it does so while containing heat and remaining energy-efficient.
To prove why the air fryer belongs in the summer cooking hall of fame, I ran some tests to see how much the oven heats up the kitchen versus an air fryer. Spoiler alert: The air fryer trounced the oven, barely raising the temperature in my home at all. Air fryers also cook quickly and need almost no preheat time so you'll keep from turning that all-important space into a sauna.
A heat wave requires creative thinking to keep the home cool and an air fryer is my ticket to getting through those sweltering summer spells without starving. The best part? A quality air fryer can be had for as little as $50. Since air fryers use less energy than an oven or grill, they'll save you money on your monthly energy costs.
Trendy air fryers are all they're cracked up to be, especially when it's hot out.
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How much my oven heated my kitchen after 30 minutes
The air fryer turns out juicy chicken thighs in under 20 minutes.
David Watsky/CNET
To find real-world differences, I roasted chicken thighs in my KitchenAid wall oven (less than 10 years old) and a 4-quart Dreo air fryer, according to two popular recipes from a well-known cooking site. I tested the temperature before, during and after to see how much of a difference each machine makes.
My Brooklyn apartment kitchen is on the small side, but it's not enclosed and opens up to the rest of the apartment. I kept the windows closed for the test, although it's worth noting that recent studies show cooking with natural gas in an enclosed kitchen can be a health risk.
I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to turn on the big oven these days.
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The standard oven recipe called for the chicken to be roasted at 375 degrees for 30 minutes in the oven. Because of its smaller chamber, the air fryer recipe only required 20 minutes of cooking at the same temperature. The air fryer requires only about a minute to come to temperature, while the oven takes more than five.
An ambient thermometer is all I needed to test how much hotter a gas oven can make the kitchen.
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I placed a standard ambient thermometer in the middle of the kitchen -- about 5 feet from the stove -- at counter height. I took a reading before the oven or air fryer was turned on. I took another reading halfway through the cooking time and the last one at the end of the cooking time. Between the two sessions, I waited for the kitchen to return to a resting temperature before starting the next one.
The big oven made my kitchen 12 degrees hotter than the air fryer
Ovens have more capacity than air fryers but it's still rarely worth it to heat the house up during summer.
KitchenAid
As I suspected, my oven heated the kitchen far more than the air fryer. Midway through the recipes (15 minutes), the oven raised the temperature of my kitchen by 15 degrees from 71 F to too-hot 88 F.
After 10 minutes of cooking with the air fryer on 375 F, the temperature in my kitchen had gone up only 5 degrees F, from 72 F to a pleasant 77 F. You can feel heat emanating from the air fryer if you stand close enough, but it's not enough to significantly change the temperature of the kitchen.
Read more: Here's How to Keep Your Kitchen Cool (and Lower Your Energy Bill) During a Heat Wave
Not only did the air fryer cause less of a temperature spike, but I only needed to have it running for roughly 20 minutes with one minute of preheat time. The oven took 30 minutes to cook the chicken and 6 minutes to preheat.
Using the air fryer will cut down on energy bills
Even modern ovens use significantly more energy than an air fryer.
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During a heat wave, your air conditioner is already working hard. Heating the kitchen up with your oven will only require them to work harder, using more energy to bring the room back down to your desired temperature. For the AC to make up the difference for one 20- or 30-minute cooking session with an oven, it may not be a total budget-buster. Spread that out over time or for longer cooking sessions and using the oven during hot months can have real fiscal ramifications. For more on this, read my breakdown of exactly how much more an oven costs to run than an air fryer.
What can you make in an air fryer?
Roasted chicken in the air fryer is dynamite and takes less time than in the large oven.
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An air fryer can do almost any cooking job that an oven can, although air fryers are typically smaller than wall ovens so you can't cook as much in one go.
I've been tinkering with the air fryer a lot this year. I discovered the joy of cooking whole chickens in the air fryer, filets of salmon and even bacon cheeseburgers. The air fryer goes well beyond its reputation for cooking crispy wings and french fries. You can make dinner party-level recipes in the air fryer without breaking a sweat, literally.
Here are seven foods that I only make in the air fryer now not just because they keep my kitchen cooler but because the results are as good or better than other methods. Here's our complete guide to air fryers, everyone's favorite new kitchen appliance.
FAQs
How much energy does an air fryer save when compared to a wall oven?
An air fryer uses 50% less total energy than a wall oven does, according to calculations performed by CNET's resident kitchen home tech expert, David Watsky.