Air fryer arrives today
Bandwagon: here I come.
I splurged on the Typhur Dome 2 air fryer, a $499 model that is currently on sale for $350. I like the size; I wanted one big enough to handle a side dish for my family of four, but small enough that I can tuck it away when it's not in use. Mostly, though, I wanted a model that wouldn't make burnt-plastic smells, which apparently a lot of the highly rated but cheaper models do, even after the burn-off cycles. This one uses a "ceramic" coating instead of the typical nonstick. Probably just trading one set of forever chemicals for another. Sigh.
Anyway, I'm excited about this thing for a few reasons:
- Getting better, crispier results than a typical convection oven can. For example, with oven-roasted fries, which I prefer to deep-fried fries; or "fake-frying" something with panko instead of deep frying.
- Not having to heat an entire oven to cook a small serving. I hate doing this on a hot day.
- Fast cooking a single serving or meal, like my lunch while working from home.
The first dishes I want to try are chicken cutlets, fish fillets, and potato and sweet-potato fries (homemade and tossed in oil; not frozen or pre-fried). These are all things I found on the best-of recipe lists. Plus I've got a couple ideas of my own: polenta fries and crispy rice!
If I can cook a chicken cutlet and side dish together in 20 minutes for my lunch in a set-and-forget manner, that'd be pretty great.
A related note here is that I'm on an elimination diet to figure out which foods are causing me some long-standing digestive issues. It's a pain in the ass, and if I do it right, it's going to last a while. While I'm on it, I can't eat most prepared foods or meals that other people make. Hence my point above about making it quicker and easier to cook myself a small meal.
Sidebar: another gadget
As much as I like simplicity and wish I were a minimalist, I like gadgets. I just do, and I always have. It's a perennial effort to avoid buying too much shit.
My wife is a good balancing force, though. While she buys plenty of things that I'd consider quite unnecessary (like her recent purchase of brown and yellow wine glasses that were probably expensive and I just don't understand or like at all), she does not like accumulating gadgets. So when I ask about buying something like an air fryer, the quick and default response is that we don't need it. But I can eventually wear her down, not to the point where she agrees we should buy one, but at least to the point where she tires of the conversation and acquiesces. What is what happened two days ago with the air fryer conversation.