There had been hypes about Air Fryer a few years back. It's supposed to be the healthier choice of cooking because it requires little to no oil to "fry" food. So my family went and got the Mayer Air Fryer. It's pretty ironic actually, because we don't really make fried food at home.

It’s very easy to operate as you just have to place the food in the “tray”, set the temperature and timer and it'll cook your food. It's very convenient and washing is easy.

However, the tray compartment is rather small, so not everything will fit in. A slightly bigger size fish will not fit in, unless you cut of trim it.

To be honest, there are many dishes the Air Fryer can cook that other appliances (toaster/ovens) can do also. And those appliances can be more efficient due to their bigger size. As you can see from the photo, I've got a small oven and it’s bigger than the Air Fryer tray compartment. So basically I can bake 2 slices of salmon in the oven but only one in the Air Fryer.

Furthermore, because the Air Fryer is a relatively newer appliance, there are actually lesser recipe for it out there on the internet. Moreover, the setting and cooking time for different brands actually differs. So what might work for the Mayer Air Fryer may not work for the Philip one, and vice versa.

Another thing that I don't like about the air fryer is that whatever it cooked turns out dryer and sometimes, tougher that other ways of cooking. For example if I fry a salmon in a pan, it'll be much juicier than the one fried in the air fryer. It's the same for other things that I tried with the Air Fryer, like meat and prawns.

In the end, we hardly use the Air Fryer, I think it doesn't cater to our needs. I find that I actually use the oven, microwave and toaster more than the air fryer. But we don't really make fried food to begin with, so the problem might be with us.

We almost only use it once a year, for a baking Chinese New Year goody —“ Cuttlefish with seaweed.
We've tried to bake other goodies like Arrowhead chips with the air fryer but it doesn't work, the chips don't look nice, are not as crispy and gets soggy really fast.

Calling the Mayer Air Fryer lousy will be pretty unfair to it as it does serve its purpose of being able to fry food with little oil. However it sacrifices the texture of the food, which is a huge letdown. I guess itll work for certain groups of people, especially those who enjoys wants to stay healthy and doesn't have high expectation of the quality of food the eat.