It’s now compulsory to own an air fryer. “Surely, you have one,” say all my friends, “You really must. It’s ridiculous you don’t own one. They are ecologically excellent and only take up a smidgen of bench space.”
I’m certain that’s all true. But one smidgen of bench space leads to another smidgen of bench space, and – if you follow every appliance trend – you end up living in what looks like the back of a St Vincent de Paul op shop.
I’m appliance wary, and so is Jocasta. “Let them prove themselves first,” we always say as new appliance hoves into view. Once an appliance has been around for 20 years, maybe 30, we may be willing to consider its purchase.
Air fryer? Ask me again in 20, maybe 30, years.Credit: iStock
Our microwave, for example, was only purchased two years ago, when a passion for eating tacos pushed it over the line from “superfluous” to “somewhat useful”.
Before this, we endured 30 years of being treated like weirdos. The children’s friends would, in particular, whisper to their parents about the primitive conditions experienced during any visit to our house.
“We had left-oven pizza and they had to reheat it in the oven.” This would be said as if the house had no electricity, a dunny up the back, and a horse and cart in the drive. “They don’t have a microwave,” they’d go on to explain, using the shocked tone of someone revealing a coven of witches living next door.
These comments would then be reported back to us by the children’s parents. “They thought you didn’t have a microwave, but of course that can’t be right,” they’d say, before uttering a nervous laugh.
It wasn’t that we were anti-microwave. We’d merely noted that its purpose is to heat food, a task for which our oven was also keen to offer its services.
The air-fryer is in the same category. Come back to me in 20 years and I’ll consider it. When I say this to all the air fryer fans, they became a little frosty, as if I am letting the side down. It’s one of the curiosities of the modern world that we are asked to prove our worth by buying the same products as our friends.
In this particular war, I am battle-hardened. I waited 10 years after everyone else to buy a mobile phone – in retrospect a blissful time which I should have elected to continue. The response to my lack of a phone – “What’s your mobile number?” “Sorry, don’t have one” - was always suspicion, as if I were secretly Amish, or a spy, or had a steel plate in my head that I was trying not to radiate. No one seemed able to accept my mundane reasoning: if you can live without something, at least for a while, why not try and live without it?
Certainly, that’s true in the kitchen. By exercising caution, Jocasta and I have avoided many of the more egregious kitchen missteps of the past few decades. We shunned the benchtop popcorn maker which, much like a saucepan, cooks popcorn. We spurned the benchtop omelette maker which, much like a frypan, cooks omelettes. The “Quick and Easy Pie Maker” was also side-stepped; as was “The Eggspert” from Breville, a device with which can “cook, poach and steam eggs without the guesswork.”
Here’s the thing: I don’t mind the guesswork. With eggs, in particular, the guesswork is part of the fun. I put them in cold water and stand, staring at the pot, waiting for the water to boil. Once the water begins to boil, you leave them for three minutes – a time span that can be measured by singing Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love from start to finish. If the eggs are perfect, it means you’ve managed to sing the song accurately, neither missing a verse nor altering The King’s tempo. The sense of satisfaction that results cannot be matched, even by the Breville Eggspert.
It’s not true, by the way, that a watched pot never boils. It forces you to do nothing for about six minutes, which often proves the best six minutes of your day. Especially if you don’t own a mobile phone or a dinging microwave and are therefore left undistracted.
And yet, still, I feel the societal pressure to join the air fryer club. People mention the device so often, I should receive frequent fryer points. I decide to do some research. I enter the phrase “Are air fryers worth it?” into Google. The result throws me into a world of air fryer enthusiasm, in which converts sing songs of praise on websites such as Reddit. “The best thing we’ve ever owned,” says one, and the rest seem to agree. I could have asked “Is Jesus a good bloke?” and the tone of happy hosannas would not have been greater.
Will I give in to the pressure and buy one? Can I maintain my appliance wary stance? As it is, I feel like the Che Guevara of the suburbs – fighting a difficult battle of resistance, one appliance at a time.
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