An air fryer is fast becoming a household name, and many questions from already-users and prospective users have been popping out regarding the kitchen appliance. With an air fryer been an electrical appliance, one of the major concerns of people has been its wattage use. People want to know if it is economical to use an air fryer and, hence, how many watts per hour does an air fryer consume?
Air Fryer’s average wattage electricity use per hour is between 1400 and 1700, 1.4kwh and 1.7kwh. This is quite on the positive side. An air fryer can consume this less power even with its efficiency because of its small size. Just before justice is done to the topic – Air Fryer Wattage, let’s get you in on how air fryers are changing our lives.
How Air Fryers are Changing our Lives?
For a cooking transformative experience, an air fryer in your kitchen will do the magic. In so many ways, air fryers are changing lives, making cooking more fun and stress-free.
Not everyone finds cooking an easy thing to do. Cooking can be a lot of work if you don’t have the right kitchen appliances. I bet you know cooking can be so frustrating and time-demanding. Meanwhile, air fryers are more efficient than other cooking methods, hence your need to invest in them.
Imagine if you are in a group of super busy mums with mouths to feed. You don’t have all the time in the whole world to get food on the table, and yes, you are still concerned with serving your family with healthy meals. You seem lost and confused about what to do. Not to worry, an air fryer is all you need.
Okay, being a super busy mom does not describe you. You are a stay-at-home mom, and you seem to have all of the time at your disposal. You want to make sure your family is feeding well. It is fine, but you do not have to feel exhausted at the end of the day after making your family meals. With an air fryer, you can do your cooking faster. At the end of the day, you will be able to have your time invested in some other things.
So yes, there are many ways air fryers are changing our lives. Some of them are as listed below:
- Air fryers cook your food with air and it comes out just fine like it would if it were deep-fried. This is so because food cooked in an air fryer is much more intense heat.
- Air fryers than deep fryers are safer to use, and you are not scared of hot oil spills from frying pans.
- With the temperature and cooking time control, air fryers take less time, less preparation, and less attention.
- Easier to clean since they work creating very little mess. With all of the trays used for cooking removed and washed, the inside becomes clean by just wiping down.
- Cooks faster and more evenly. With a flame, you might not be able to control how evenly you want it fried.
- Air fryers cook pretty much anything, from vegetables to crispy fried chicken. Veggies, Meats varying sizes and shapes, desserts, bread, sausages, doughnuts, and even eggs can be cooked in them.
- The health benefits of air frying are a major reason to consider. Deep frying or Pan-frying soaks up the oil you cook them with, while air frying, on the other hand, needs just oil coating to get the food cooked. Air fryer foods contain lesser calories, less fat and so it’s healthier.
- The air fryer foods are crispier and taste better.
The wattage of an Air Fryer and its Specification
Being an electrical appliance, the air fryer wattage and results is a necessary topic to be discussed. Also, different food would have different wattage requirements hence the need to give attention to wattage difference and system requirements.
Watt specification and measurement differ and the determining factor is the type of food that is to be cooked in it. For example, to cook foods like meats, chicken, protein of any kind and frozen foods will require high watt while low watt will be required for foods like potatoes, omelet, and vegetables.
Below is the list of some air fryers classified according to their watt specification and requirements
Low (800-900) watts
- This amount of watt is just suitable for the cooking of food items like broccoli, veggies, omelet, carrots, etc. It requires low watts because we only need food to be moist.
Low (900 -1000) watts
This power range is a slow and steady low heat cooking required for food items like cheese sticks, french fries, munchies, frozen foods, and many others. Actifry classic chips use electricity consumption of 1kW over 40 minutes
High (1000 – 1200) watts
- The foods in this category are foods that are super rich in protein. E.g., Chicken breast. They require high heat to cook.
High (1200 – 1300) Watts
- The peas and nuts all fall in this category. Cashew, Peas, Almonds are few examples and this is because they need to be roasted.
High (1400 – 1500) Watts
- If you so desire, your air fryer can bake too. Muffins, bread, cakes etc can all be baked at this temperature.
It is okay if the next question on your mind is, “what is the difference between high and low watt?”. Let’s go through the differences together.
- High-watt cooking is not time-consuming because the higher the watt, the lesser time it takes for a food to be cooked. On the other hand, low-watt cooking is time-consuming.
- In low-watt cooking, the evenly cooking of the food is more ascertained, while in high-watt cooking, evenly cooking is not ascertained because of the short period of cooking time.
- An air fryer of higher voltage specification heats faster than a low-watt air fryer.
- Higher power air fryers use more power than smaller units.
Air Fryer’s Size and Electricity
So that you know, there is a correlation between machine size (with an electric heating element) and power consumption. At the end of this part of the article, we would have let you know if air fryers use a lot of electricity or if air fryers use less electricity. The question ” how many amps does an air fryer use?” would have been answered too.
When it comes to energy use, air fryers are a better option. Know the amount of energy an air fryer uses depends on the model and especially the size of the air fryer. The average Amp rating in Watts is usually 1500Watts.
- To calculate the energy use of an air fryer
- Multiply the wattage usages for appliances by the number of hours it is used per day.
- Then divide by 1000 and you will have the daily energy usage in kilowatt-hour (kWh).
For example, a NuWave Brio 6-Quart Air Fryer has a wattage of 1500W. It is assumed to be used for 2 hours a day. The energy use in a day is
1500 watt × 2 hours = 3000watt-hour / 3000Wh
3000watt-hour/1000 = 3kilowatt-hour / 3kWh.
2. To calculate the power of an air fryer
- Note that, American appliances use 110V while other countries use 220V.
For the sake of this writing, the American appliance voltage will be used to calculate the power of a 1500 Watts air fryer.
1500 watts/ 110V = 13.64Amps.
Exactly how much it will cost is a factor of how much is being charged per wattage/amperage of electricity in the region.
The US Department of Energy says to use up to 1800W of electric devices. Trying to use an air fryer of 1800W in the US will be a costly mistake because you may end up tripping your circuit breaker.
The honest advice is for you to stay within the limit of the country’s specification, else you won’t be able to make your air fryer work for you.
Final Words
Before the final words, we will like to answer one of the FAQs “how long does it take for an air fryer to reach its full preheat temperature?”.
Preheating the air fryer is best for optimum cooking. Doing that will set the temperature and airflow to the right level and make it super easy to achieve a crispy feel on your food items. So preheating for about 3 minutes is just perfect and enough to kickstart your cooking in an air fryer.
Air fryers are small convection ovens, and since the area to keep warm is not so big, the wattage use is lower than the conventional oven. This deduction has rendered the belief that “air fryers are not energy efficient” partially invalid. Air fryers are energy efficient, and yes, the power cost of hot air frying is cheaper than conventional ovens.
We hope that with this article, you will be able to see how important the air fryer wattage is and you will be sure to consider it before getting a model of an air fryer.
We hope this helped you. Please feel free to drop your one or two words or questions in the comment box below.