COMPARISON TEST - 13 hot air fryers

Fish 'n chips, samosa and tempura - all these dishes are rooted in completely different cultures and culinary circles and yet have one thing in common that unites them: they are all prepared in a bath of boiling oil. Deep-frying has an extraordinarily old history and was described for the very first time in the "De re coquinara", the oldest cookbook of Roman antiquity from the 3rd century AD. But as wonderful as the taste of all these dishes is, eating them is really not good for your health, if only because of the immense amount of oil they contain. Fortunately, the market now offers appealing alternatives in the form of modern hot-air fryers: Instead of using litres of boiling oil, these models use a blast of hot air to heat the food from all sides. Therefore, for all those foods that have already been provided with a millilitre or two of oil by the manufacturer, there is no need to use more oil. Other dishes, be it vegetables, meat, fish or alternatives made from seitan, soy and the like, already manage with a minimum amount of oil right from the start. While the first models more than 10 years ago were still extremely expensive, many other manufacturers have now also expanded their product range: Therefore, current models - depending on the extent of their functional spectrum - are already available from an attractive market price of ~65 €. We have tested 13 current models in the last few weeks and will now tell you how they are to be handled, how they prepare different types of food, how much electricity they consume, what the sound emissions are like, etc.