Air fryers have continued to reign supreme in the appliance world, with many ditching their ovens for the device in a bid to save on energy bills.
But Martin Lewis wants people to know a few facts before making the switch, particularly about their energy consumption. The Money Saving Expert founder is regularly asked about the best ways to save on cash, including, one of which includes changing to an air fryer.
Back in December, Mr Lewis appeared on ITV’s This Morning and said he was “sceptical” on if energy-saving reason actually made total sense. The advice was spurred as many households at the time planned to use their fryers to cook their Christmas dinner.
As reported by Bristol Live, he said: “I heard you on the show mentioning someone was gonna cook a Christmas dinner in an air fryer. Is that right? If that’s being done for energy reasons, I would be somewhat sceptical whether that is a good idea.
“If it’s being done for taste, I don’t want to get involved. I mean, the benefit of an oven is when you’re cooking a lot for a lot of people, and you can fill all the racks and have it on consistently.
“Air fryers are good for small things that cook quickly. If you’re gonna have to use your air fryer 15 different times for different items generally on energy usage, you’d be better off to use an oven. So it’s an interesting thought.”
Martin continued: “The problem with the equation for heating equipment is an oven is going to be about 2000W. A microwave I believe, from memory, a best guess explanation, a microwave gives you consistent heat whereas an oven is warming up to full temperature and then topping it up so it isn’t running at full power the whole time.
“But if you’re doing a jacket potato for 10 minutes it’s going to be far cheaper [in the microwave] than doing a single jacket potato in an oven and keeping it on for an hour and a half.
“However if you were doing a full roast dinner and you were cooking many of them, that is where it’s probably cheaper than putting five or six jacket potatoes in a microwave because each additional object you put in a microwave, you need to keep it on longer because a microwave just heats the individual object.”
The expert also said: “General equation is, find the wattage of an item, then work out how many kilowatts or what fraction of a kilowatt it’s using, then multiply that by 34p per hour of use.” The same advice can be applied to air fryers and halogen cookers.
“If you had a 1000W microwave and you put it on for 10 minutes, one KWH for a sixth of an hour, a sixth of 34p is about 6p, shall we say? So it’s 6p turning the microwave on for that amount of time. So yes it’s a very useful equation.”
Energy specialist Llewellyn Kinch from MakeMyHouseGreen.com had a super tip for cooking Christmas dinner in the most power-efficient way: “If you cook a turkey in the oven for several hours, it’ll use up lots of electricity. The savvy way is to use a slow cooker, which costs a fraction to run compared to a traditional oven. Crispy skin lovers can always finish the turkey in the oven for a short period of time.
“For side dishes, opt for energy-efficient cooking methods, such as the microwave or convection oven. Roast potatoes come out well in energy-efficient air fryers. A final tip is to always match saucepan sizes to hot plates or burners, and keep lids on pots to reduce cooking time and energy waste.”
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