Air Fryer

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storewanderer
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Air Fryer

Post by storewanderer »

I am curious why more restaurants do not switch to air fryers for their process of heating up frozen already par-fried food.

The air fryer is healthier, easier to clean, saves oil costs. I'm not sure if it cuts down on utility costs or not.

It seems like this should be the way of the future.
Alpha8472
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Re: Air Fryer

Post by Alpha8472 »

The problem is that air fryers are small. There are no industrial sized air fryers and the companies that supply restaurants with equipment only focus on oil fryers or ovens. You would need 20 air fryers to even attempt to match a single oil fryer.

Air fryers are notorious for uneven cooking. The outside is crispy, but the inside is still frozen. With oil fryers, the heat of the oil will cook frozen food better.

Certain foods with seasoning on top will burn in air fryers. Corn dogs and other foods with wet batter do not work well with air fryers. Large and thick meats will have problems. The outside is burned and dry while the inside is still frozen.

Customers will complain about the taste. The air fryer makes food incredibly dry on the outside and with less oil it will not taste as good.

People want the taste of real fried food that is fried in oil.
storewanderer
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Re: Air Fryer

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: July 21st, 2022, 11:08 pm The problem is that air fryers are small. There are no industrial sized air fryers and the companies that supply restaurants with equipment only focus on oil fryers or ovens. You would need 20 air fryers to even attempt to match a single oil fryer.

Air fryers are notorious for uneven cooking. The outside is crispy, but the inside is still frozen. With oil fryers, the heat of the oil will cook frozen food better.

Certain foods with seasoning on top will burn in air fryers. Corn dogs and other foods with wet batter do not work well with air fryers. Large and thick meats will have problems. The outside is burned and dry while the inside is still frozen.

Customers will complain about the taste. The air fryer makes food incredibly dry on the outside and with less oil it will not taste as good.

People want the taste of real fried food that is fried in oil.
I've reheated (bone in, breast pieces) fried chicken in the air fryer with great results. The trick seems to be flipping it multiple times. The amount of oil that emits out of this stuff when being heated is quite high.

Skinnier items like chicken strips seem to be a lot easier, and things like a french fry of course are very easy.

I don't think it would work for making fresh fried chicken (from raw form) but so many restaurants just reheat already pre-cooked frozen stuff in a fryer it seems like it could work for many items.

Have not tried for corn dogs yet but tried for some frozen lumpia and that came out great. But those are quite skinny.
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Re: Air Fryer

Post by Romr123 »

The air fryer is nothing more than a stationary version of the conveyor impingement oven used at pizza restaurants. It has it's uses, but not really for the run-of-the-mill fried food (which really needs the 3d heating of deep fat frying). The research kitchens at all the large fast food restaurants that use deep fat fryers look at everything new in the industry to see if they could possibly wean themselves from the vats of shortening. It's rough, though, because deep fat frying is a pretty efficient method of heat transfer! I mentioned in another thread about working for KFC in Worldwide Quality as a mystery shopper--35 years ago KFC tried a pizza conveyor oven for a roasted product....you see how far that went.

The more flexible heating appliance is the TurboChef oven which you see at Starbucks/Subway/etc which can combine a lot of heating modalities (forced air/infrared/microwave/steam) to get a repeatable product (but in small batches and with 2-D (flat) foods).
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Re: Air Fryer

Post by veteran+ »

storewanderer wrote: July 21st, 2022, 10:35 pm I am curious why more restaurants do not switch to air fryers for their process of heating up frozen already par-fried food.

The air fryer is healthier, easier to clean, saves oil costs. I'm not sure if it cuts down on utility costs or not.

It seems like this should be the way of the future.
I have a top of the line Galanz Air Fryer (combo toaster, microwave and more) for the home.

It works like a charm!
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Re: Air Fryer

Post by cjd »

A lot of schools went away from deep fat fryers about a decade ago. Since mostly all of their food items are frozen they switched to heating them in convection ovens. Things like potato tots, french fries, chicken nuggets and corn dogs. Although probably many of those items were already being prepared that way.
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