Cooking with an air fryer is a healthy alternative to deep-frying using oil. Hot air fryers use heated air instead of hot oil to cook food. The best air fryers for home use all make use of Rapid Air Technology for frying your food with minimal or no oil.

What is a hot air fryer and how does it work?

How can you cook with just heated air? Well, to be more exact, it is rapidly moving heated air. This modern kitchen appliance comes fitted with a heating element and a fan. The heating element heats up the enclosed air inside the machine and the fan blows the hot air around. The food is cooked by this rapidly moving air striking it in all directions.

Yes, it does seems to work like a convection oven, cooking with hot air.

There are two types of these air frying machines in the market, one type uses a cooking basket and the other type uses a non-stick bowl and paddle.

So, which is the best air fryer for home use?

A popular brand of the hot air cooker that uses the cooking basket is the Philips hot air fryer. There are 2 models available in the United States, the manual HD9220/26 hot air cooker and HD9230/26 digital version.

Both have a maximum temperature of 390 degrees Fahrenheit but the digital model comes with a maximum timer of 60 minutes. The manual air frying machine has a maximum 30 minutes timer only.

It is simple to operate. Just put the food ingredients into the basket which sits on a drip drawer pan, push the basket into the machine, set the timer and temperature and the cooking process starts.

Shaking the food halfway through the cooking process is recommended so as to get the food to be cooked evenly.

As for the paddle type of air fryer, there is only one brand available at the moment. The Tefal Actifry uses a paddle to stir the food around during the cooking process. This eliminates the need to give the food a shake halfway during cooking.