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.
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.