Health3 min(s) read
Finance expert issues warning to anyone who uses an air fryer
A finance expert has warned anyone who still prefers an air fryer to an oven.
Air fryers have become a staple in many households. The trendy device can roast, bake, grill, dehydrate, and reheat quickly, making it one of the hardest-working appliances in the kitchen.
However, expert Martin Lewis revealed that choosing between an air fryer, microwave, and oven usually depends on what you're cooking and how much food you need to prepare.
Lewis shares his 'rule of thumb'
Speaking on The Martin Lewis Podcast, Lewis revealed the simple way you could work out which appliance would be cheaper to run.
"Let me give you my simple rule of thumb," he said, as cited by Express. "First of all, find the wattage of the appliance you're using. If you've got a heated gilet, it might be 50 watts. When I talk about 'heating the home' it is a lot cheaper to have a heated gilet or something that just heats you rather than heating the whole room."
He added that 1,000 watts equals 1 kilowatt and said consumers pay about 34p per kilowatt-hour. On that basis, he estimated that running a heated gilet for an hour could cost about 1.7p.
"Now, an oven is typically 1-2000W, so you're paying around 34p or 68p an hour. An oven isn't always using all the wattage as it's heating up and then topping up," he continued.
He explained that a microwave is also 1000W, "so per minute it's the same cost as an oven, but things done in the microwave when you're cooking a one-off, a one-off jacket potato, for example, is far more efficient because it's 10 minutes in the microwave, it might be an hour and a half in the oven."
Why an oven can make more sense
The money-saving expert shared that while smaller appliances can be more economical for individual items, an oven can be better when cooking a lot of food at once.
"So if you've got a turkey in there, that may well be effective if you're cooking lots of stuff in there and it's on for a couple of hours. That may well be effective if you're cooking lots of stuff," he said.
"But if you've got something small and simple in there, it's probably cheaper, and that's where the microwave and also the air fryers tend to come into their own because they're better at cooking single objects."
In other words, an air fryer is not automatically the cheaper option simply because it's smaller than an oven. The amount of food being cooked, the appliance's wattage, and how long it needs to run can all affect the overall cost.