I looked at several different recipes to figure out the proper cooking time and temperature, then drained and rinsed a can of garbanzo beans, and lightly coated them in a mix of garlic, ginger, sumac, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I cooked them at 390 for 13 minutes, shaking at the five and ten minute marks.
Conclusion: flavor was decent (because that's all down to the spices, which were intuitively correct like with everything I make), but the texture was awful. It just sort of desiccated them and made them tough. This was also way more work and took a lot longer than just cooking them in a cast iron pan, which yields a much better result overall.
3/10 air fryers continue to be inferior to the easier option of just using a stove and proper cookware.
Yes I'm comparing disparate recipes, but "roasted chickpeas in an air fryer" is one of those things people always rave about and it's just worse in every way compared to cooking them in a pan.
Let me guess: electric-powered air fryer.
Gas air fryers work so much better because they can sharply raise the temperature better than electric ones can. Yeah you need to DIY the connection to the gas hookup but it's 100% worth it to me.
Experienced cooks use gas air fryers.
I'd sooner go for a propane wok stand/burner if I was going to mess with gas tbh. I like tools I can actively and directly use instead of just a box I tell to do something and then trust to work.
I just happen to have been given an air fryer despite me repeatedly saying "aren't those just shitty tiny ovens? the hype seems like a meme from people who can't cook," and deciding to give it a fair try. So far my cynicism seems to be validated: it's not granularly controllable like an oven and I can't operate it directly like with a cast iron pan on a stove, it's literally just set a temperature and cook time and trust that the inscrutable box is doing it right.
I was being facetious, gas air fryers don't exist and anyone who tries to DIY one should get a swirlie in the dishwasher.
Lmao, I didn't even stop to think about the problems with that before rejecting it out of hand. I could imagine some sort of convection camp stove thing running off a propane tank, like a glorified grill with a fan in it, but gas ranges are demanding and risky enough and require ventilation that some shitty little countertop appliance wouldn't have. Even if the build quality was high enough that it wasn't a constant fire/explosion hazard, it would be dumping carbon monoxide everywhere.
In my (limited) experience, I've found them to be incredibly variable. I have one and it deals with oven-fry slop much quicker and with better outcomes than any actual oven I've used in my life. OTOH my partner's one takes at least twice as long for a worse result. So based on a sample size of two, you have a 50% chance of getting a good one.
Regarding air fryer recipes, it feels to me a bit like the consumer microwaves in the '80s. When they first gained widespread adoption here, there was suddenly an explosion of microwave cook books and stupid uni-tasking microwave gadgets like steamers, rice cookers and omelette makers (microwaving eggs is exactly as bad as you think, but we didn't know better at the time), all of which was only really designed to cash in on the trend. It wasn't for a good few years they settled into their niche of defrosting or reheating leftovers or frozen foods specifically designed for them.
