Air Fryer
Vs
Pressure Cooker
Vs
Microwave Oven
Three primary cooking devices in our kitchen sit on the kitchen sides. These are the Air Fryer, the Digital Pressure Cooker and the Microwave oven.
Each of our cooking devices has its specific uses and excels in its own field of cooking.
If I were to choose just three cooking machines, the Airfryer, the pressure cooker, and the microwave would all get a space.
Thankfully I don’t have to choose, and I keep the toaster, the panini maker, the food processor, the kitchen mixer, the spice grinder, the bread machine and the electric fan oven with 4 gas hob.
Our main fan oven doesn’t get much use now, and the hob is used occasionally. It’s all down to the air fryer and pressure cooker.
Play to the Strengths
As each kitchen aid has its main uses, I can use each for the different styles or parts of the meals.
Microwave Oven
Ideal for reheating, quick defrosting, and microwave-ready meals. Do baked beans need warming up? Microwave. Iceland curries, from the freezer to the microwave. It is a great time saver for a busy household.
The microwave oven killer app? – the baked potato in super quick time, but without the oven crisp skin 🙁
Digital Pressure Cooker
The Morphy Richards MyPot is an integrated digital pressure cooker.
I use it for one pot pasta bolognese (one pot spagbol) for a super quick dinner. The mince, onions and peppers straight from the freezer, jar pasta sauce for speed and any shape pasta we fancy. The pasta cooks in a jar of bolognese sauce in extra quick time. This makes for a single cooking pot to wash without boiling the pasta.
It also looks pretty cool on the kitchen side.
The pressure cooker killer app is rice.
It makes the absolute best, foolproof rice. 1:1 basmati rice to water, cook for 7 mins on the timer, and it’s done. I’ve often messed up cooking rice; too much and it mushy, not enough, and there is a hard nut in the middle. But the pressure cooker has made it too easy. I will say the MyPot is worth the money for its rice ability, but it can do much more.
Air Fryer
My AirFryer replaces our main fan oven for grilling and baking. We don’t do that much air frying in it.
I cook primarily quick and easy cook from frozen meals. But I do a banging from-scratch pizza base, topped with whatever I fancy in the air fryer.
We roast chicken more often now we have the air fryer; they come out so moist with lovely crispy skin and less electric than the main oven. But they all get air-fried from bacon to fries to cake to burgers.
Combos
Combinations like Microwave Baked Potato, finished in the air fryer for a quicker cook with crispy skins, are worth a mention.
Or the new wave of kitchen cooking machines like the Ninja Foodi 14-in-1 that can pressure cook and air fry in the same device. This is ideal if there is limited space available for kitchen gadgets. Within the 14 different uses, steam and crispen, that sounds interesting.
And the next-gen Microwave ovens that can broil, air fry, bake and microwave all in the single Microwave oven-looking device for your countertop.