Air Fryers

This site contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases. Let me tell you how this story ends, because the ending is why I read French-door ovens the way I do. It ends at a returns desk — not this brand, I want that clear from the first paragraph, a different French-door […]

This site contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases. Do French doors on an oven actually do anything, or are they theatre? I have been asking myself that question since this category decided that two small doors are classier than one big one, and the honest answer, after living around the

This site contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases. Dear reader who wrote in last month asking why the new fryer keeps beeping at you, this whole piece is the long version of the answer I was not allowed to send. I answer customer messages for a living, appliance messages, the

This site contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases. The tape measure comes out before the box opens, in my kitchen, because I buy with my own money and I have been burned by the word slim before. Slim, on the earlier fryer I sent back, meant tall wearing a trench

This site contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases. Fourteen inches. That was the depth of counter I had to offer, measured twice, written on a sticky note, carried into the purchase like a contract. The Chefman 2-quart digital mini fit into those fourteen inches the way a person fits into

This site contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases. The spit is the whole reason this machine exists in my kitchen, so the fragments start there. A three-pound chicken, trussed, skewered, turning slowly behind glass at 375 degrees, basting itself in its own fat for about fifty-five minutes while I stood

Returns teach you the order in which people fall out of love with an appliance, and with big countertop ovens the order is almost always the same. First the footprint, quietly, in the first week, a tape measure appearing next to the machine like a doctor next to a bed. Then the doors. Then, months

Four chicken thighs. That is the number this whole machine stands or falls on in my kitchen, because four thighs laid flat, skin up, not touching, is a family dinner, and the day a basket makes me cook dinner in two shifts is the day it starts losing counter space to something else. The Ninja

What does a fan speed actually buy you? That is the question I kept circling with the Cosori TurboBlaze, because the whole machine is built around a claim most brands never make out loud. Five fan speeds. A DC motor. Up to 450 degrees. Most air fryers give you one fan setting, which is on,

Nobody tells you an air fryer dies from the top down. The basket gets the blame in almost every message I see, coating flaking, handle loose, and sure, baskets die. But the machines that land on a bench and never leave it, the fault sits up top, in the fan bearing or the heating element,