Does an Air Fryer Save Money and Energy? Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer

[@katej3z715]

The roast potatoes are better mixed with the oil before going into the machine, you can add rosemary, etc, or take out the crisper but maybe slightly reduce oil. A *little* water under the crisper can be helpful as it makes steam which keeps things juicy, and helps clean the machine but this is for foods with a little more fat, like lamb or pork, etc.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Thanks for the tips! I'm getting better with the potatoes - a bit of flour toss in with them made a massive difference

[@MrKlawUK]

Also for an average 10kwh home storage battery, thats a 10% saving which is a lot - especially important in the winter when you don’t have much solar to top it up. Switch a condenser or vented tumble dryer to a heat pump one too and you could probably save 25% of your battery capacity when both are used. That could avoid you needing to expand your battery capacity

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Yup it all adds up

[@terrymackenzie6784]

Done the same test myself use the air fryers all the time now, get your self someting to spray the oil and toss the spuds with some semolina, flower and a bit of salt and they will be perfect😊

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

I will definitely be trying the semolina idea!

[@mikejoseph425]

We have talked about an air fryer so it was good to see a genuine test. My battery Solar se up is designed to work on off peak charge and solar as appropriate for the time of year. The savings therefore are all at 7.5p which makes the savings very small taking a long time for any payback and taking up more worktop space We have recently replaced our condenser tumble dryer with a heat pump and the saving are substantial 400Wh v 3kWh which is not only a running cost saving but much less of a drain on the batteries therefore less chance of tripping over into peak rate later in the evening before 11.30 We went foe a Miele which was about £300 more than a Samsung because it has heat exchanger cleaning from the front avoiding a strip Down at the rear which is not covered by the warranty I like your videos, clear and concise

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Thank you. I also switched to a heat pump dryer a couple of years ago, I went for a Bosch one and am very pleased with it

[@colingoode3702]

We've got a twin drawer Vortex air fryer (similar to a a Ninja) & use it alot. Not done a complete roast chicken in it yet but I do use it for chops, steaks, chicken thighs / legs, sausages, bacon & roast pots etc. Definitely cheaper than an oven & much quicker with very short warm up time. The only snag we've found is that because we use it a lot the AF drawers are always in the dishwasher waiting to be cleaned. We could therefore do with a spare set of drawers. Still finding different ways to cook different types of food with it but you are right, nothing beats an oven cooked roastie.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

That is a big issue with the mega-zone one I have - that single drawer is huge and takes up most of the dishwasher. I've been hand washing it as a consequence.

[@shaunwhiteley3544]

Not sure about the single draw type but we use the silicon inserts and just put them in the dishwasher.

[@rosepetal45]

Ninja do not recommend using the dishwasher to help preserve the nonstick lining. I just bu g in some hot water and washing up liquid when done and leave told after dinner. Most times you can swirl a bit and rinse.

[@MC-emmcee]

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech You would save a lot more energy if you did not use the dishwasher at all. Washing everything by hand (no real chore, especially if the kids do it) saves a ton of energy.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

@@MC-emmceeThere are many studies showing that using a dishwasher can save energy and water overall compared to hand washing. I guess it really varies though depending on how much you have to wash up.

[@SimersTO]

Just bought the flexdrawer fryer after our Cosori fryer broke thanks for the info!

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Enjoy! We use ours pretty much every day still

[@mikec2505]

Maybe you could mute the soundtrack every time you say ‘Hey Siri’ for those of us watching on iOS devices? 😂😂 It’s carnage out here!

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Haha oops sorry

[@mychair10]

wait till he says ALEXA! @@SpeakToTheGeekTech

[@doodeedah6409]

Can that even happen? Siri only responds to your voice. I’ve tried many times imitating my brother’s (and my friends’) voices to activate their siri. It has never worked. I don’t think this video will activate anyone’s siri ;)

[@NonnyRat]

Yep, it got my Siri going both times, was too slow second time and had to manually cancel the timer 😂.

[@NonnyRat]

@@doodeedah6409, his voice must be close enough to mine, as it activated my Siri both times.

[@TRANCEFARMERS]

As a GREEK I LOVE ROTISSERIE CHICKEN; However My favourite is ordering (when living in GREECE); Is CHARCOAL GRILL BBQ chicken 'FLATENED in 2 pieces NICE & BBQ CRISPY on the outside'; sometimes the WING/BREAST AREA is a little PINK Inside 'may need to heat in OCEN; I think the 'AIR FRYER' has the space for TWO HALF-CHICKENS INSIDE *Still haven't USED THE APPLIANCE; but looking forward to USING IT

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Good luck then! Yes two half chickens would easily fit in this air fryer

[@JOOI525]

Big fan of the Ninja range. Never felt comfortable using the pressure cooker, with the Ninja one pot cooker it makes it so simple. Can also use 2 at once and stay under my inverter limit, so veg in one Ninja in pressure cooker mode and meat/fish/quorn in other 😊

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Nice, double Ninja'ing :)

[@costakis7895]

cool, was looking for such a review, thanks

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Group51]

Hey dinkum please. She who must not be named is reacting to your commands! Otherwise yes. I think my air fryer uses half the power and doesn’t have a warm up time so it’s a lot less power than my fan oven and so much faster.

[@johnb7644]

Take the tray out of the spud compartment and see they fry better

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Thanks, I'll give that a go on Sunday. I had wondered that but thought perhaps they wouldn't cook as evenly because there'd be no air flow underneath.

[@johnb7644]

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Cheers, keep us in the loop, hopefully they’ll be tasty 😋

[@marcomeggiolaro651]

Great video! Greetings from Italy! Could you tell me what is the peak power absorption of the Ninja when using both zones or the mega zone? I need to evaluate if domestic power supply is enough… thanks

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Both zones together pull about 2.5kw

[@LuminarySpeshal]

Do you have online booking available for Sunday Dinner please?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Haha the cover charge is extortionate!

[@RYN988]

Kindly mute Siri prompts you triggered my homepod. Video much appreciated.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Hey Siri, subscribe to Speak to the Geek on KZbin :) point taken!

[@piezoman79]

I’ve never seen a recipe call for adding oil to the air fryer basket…

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

The ones I've read do, including the instruction manual for the air fryer which has cooking guidelines for all sorts of things.

[@piezoman79]

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech the concept makes zero sense, since the food will not be sitting in it to take on the surface glaze/crisp of or be cooked through its heat penetration as in deep frying, and since most air fryers heat from the top and only circulate hot air, the oil sitting below the grate or tray is not aerosolized particularly well to be adsorbed onto the food. It’s basically throwing money away and creating a mess of additional oil to have to clean out of the tray for no benefit to the cooking. Just as with roasting, a light coat of oil to the food being cooked is all you need.

[@chorltondragon]

Useful video. I just bought one of these (same model) and was wondering how much energy it uses. I did a similar test using HA and got similar results to you. The energy saving seems to come from having to cook for less time. Or at least it does provided you can do everything in the device. I have run my air fryer and my oven at the same time for a meal that wouldn't fit in the air fryer in one go. That was a big mistake! Not only was it using (approx) 1.5 times the energy it also passed the limit on my inverter (4kw) and so we had to draw from the grid at peak rate. Still early days for me using the air fryer. I just need to be more careful to avoid using 4kw! At least I don't pay the carrot tax. Our dog won't eat them :)

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Yeah it's one or the other for us, I wouldn't use the air fryer if I had the oven on already. The warmup time alone for the oven uses a ton of energy.

[@kigtod]

Great video. We have a combination microwave with a convection mode that heats up faster than the oven because of the smaller volume and cooks marginally faster. The cooking quality seems as good as the oven. I wonder what the difference in energy cost would be between that and an air fryer?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

It’s probably similar I would think if not even lower power

[@ammelois]

Perhaps you could explain... Many of us have found this video very informative, in comparison to what id usually out there.

[@John-ez5yt]

Good video thankyou

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Thanks!

[@rorymurphy8275]

Why did you not use the "Roast"setting for the chicken?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Honestly, it's because pretty much all of the guides I read on how to cook a chicken in an air fryer told me to use the air fry mode and not the roast mode. I'm told that the roast mode might cook the outside too quickly and leave the inside still uncooked, but I haven't actually tried it out myself yet. Perhaps that's an experiment for another day.

[@MrKlawUK]

silly question - but couldn’t you have an energy graph in HA using the same sensor for home usage? so you could see kWh used over the time (and then remove baseload)? I’d love a way to get that hourly like the givenergy dashboard does too

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Possibly but that would take a lot of thinking! I had to use manual estimation of the base load and deduct that, and you can see it was different each time. I could have put an energy monitor on the air fryer but I couldn’t do that with the oven so figured this was the best way to do the comparison.

[@geoffreycoan]

You have to create a custom template home usage sensor (import-export+pv generation-battery charge+battery discharge) as the inbuilt inverter sensors only measure what that inverter delivered and with two inverters they share the load. That’s what I had to do. Bear in mind that the GivEnergy portal data is only sampled every 5 minutes so is an approximation

[@geoffreycoan]

Oli’s cooking channel? You could have got more accurate power consumption using a smart plug on the air fryer and an energy clamp (I have a couple of Shelly EM’s on key circuits like the ASHP, but not the oven 😢). Presumably there’s little in the way of automation options for the air fryer. No HA or remote control and even a smart switch wouldn’t be usable. Personally we use the slow cooker a lot for cheaper and easier cooking. One other point is what the peak draw of the oven/air fryer is. Likely that the air fryer is lower so more able to keep within inverter discharge limits, thus avoiding peak grid draw

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

No automation options at all unless I fitted a load of SwitchBots to it to press the buttons! Both the single oven and air fryer peak at about 2.5kW so it’s only when other things like the kettle are used that the power can go above the inverter limit. But I have a 9kW limit on that anyway so it wouldn’t have been a fair point for me to try and make :)

[@ecoterrorist1402]

Any update on the ASHP now for the pun are you now toastie

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Part 2 coming this Saturday (23rd) and I'm nice and toastie!

[@carstenhansen5757]

I would have seen it, if it had chapters with a conclusion.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Eh?

[@PeterGagen]

Well,, you make me smile... You certainly found the long way around to measure your energy. I don't think you did too badly with the cooking but I bit more practice, to perfect your technique might help... 🙂

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

I’m getting better at the roasties the more I try them!

[@ammelois]

Perhaps you could explain... Many of us have found this video very informative, in comparison to what id usually out there.

[@MattyFreedom]

Water from your veg into the gravy will save you a kettle boil and grab you a few lost vitamins to boot.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Good point, I'll try that!

[@nisirob1]

what no gravy the second time round?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Of course there was gravy, I'm not a sadist! I just decided filming it once was enough for the viewers... :)

[@Cchogan]

Quick rule - never say Hey Siri or Alexa. It can trigger people’s devices. It just did mine.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Fair point

[@cje3083]

You would have saved energy on gas stove if you had put a lid on the pan

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Very true, but for this experiment I wasn't monitoring the energy used from gas which was identical between the two trials. I was just monitoring the like for like electricity consumption.

[@jimmyc38]

Intrigued 😂, are you going to cap your gas off when your ASHP is up and running?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

I have to replace the oven first which involves new electric circuit and money, but that is the plan yes

[@tarkadahl1985]

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER 😂

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

I've improved the roastie situation too since then as well

[@6panel300]

A gas oven costs about ¼ the cost of an electric oven to use. And it vista the same any time of day.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

At the moment perhaps, but with solar/batteries then the cost is comparable. And with electric ovens you don’t get the nitrogen dioxide pollution in your home.

[@goombapizza6335]

I guess Brits don't season or marinate their food? They just cook it plain and then pour gravy on it?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Yeah pretty much! Or mustard. Go try some British style mustard if you think we don’t do seasoning :)

[@GeoKan]

Never put a whole chicken in - better split it.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Works pretty well though, but I’ll try splitting and see what happens thanks

[@rob-stewart]

Does the paypack diffence increase for shorter cooking periods? E.g. if some oven chips took 15min to cook? I would assume the warming up factor of the oven would have a larger effect the shorter the cook time?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

So many factors affect the payback time including shorter cooking periods, frequency of use, initial purchase cost, etc. I'd say you need to take it with a long term view of usage rather than looking at an individual meal, i.e. if you are generally using the air fryer instead of your oven a couple of times a day then your payback period will be sooner than if you only cooked a few chips in it once per week.

[@BritishAnts]

We bought a slow cooker and used it a few times, it made the food taste funny and metallic despite cleaning it before use and gave us all headaches! I read it disrupts your DNA due to the chemicals used which made sense to us! As a result we decided not to buy one of these ovens incase it turns out the same as the slow cooker thats now packed away never to be used again! Two out of the 4 in the house had no complaints fyi

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Our slow cooker also gave the food an odd taste which I didn’t like but it’s not chemicals - the thing is made from ceramic and about as inert as cooking pots get. The air fryer on the other hand is coated in a non stick surface but there’s no odd taste at all. Just quicker, cheaper and crispier.

[@roguebullet4220]

Oven - roasted!😅

[@grahamjohnson4702]

Where are you all living on solar, inverter and batteries, never seen so many people on You Tube videos that are this way.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

I'm in South Wales in the UK. Trying to do my bit and reduce my environmental footprint where I'm able to and certainly solar and battery installations are getting very popular now.

[@grahamjohnson4702]

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Thanks for your speedy reply, I would not think they would be so popular in the UK. I would think they would be in the more sunny countries.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Solar panels are very effective in the UK especially in summer. Over winter they are not so good because the days are shorter, but they still make a huge difference to my energy bill. Batteries are also massively helpful in spreading the solar energy out into the darker hours in summer (so my energy bills are practically nothing), or in the winter they help me run the house using off-peak energy rates because I charged them cheaply over night. Have a look at some of the other videos on my channel, I'm going on about them all the time :)