Hot take: air fryer preheat times are a total scam or necessary evil?

Yesterday I tried cooking frozen chicken tenders and argued with my air fryer for 15 minutes about whether to preheat. My buddy swears preheating makes everything crispier but I think it just wastes time and electricity. My tenders came out fine without it. So who's right here?

3 comments

3 Comments

reese_taylor6929d ago

I mean, I read somewhere that preheating is more for even cooking than just crispiness, especially with frozen stuff. Your tenders might have been fine this time but maybe they'd be better with a preheat. Honestly, I skip it half the time too and my fries still come out okay. I think it just depends on what you're cooking and how picky you are about texture.

zarapalmer17d agoTop Commenter

Actually, I've done some experimenting and I think preheating matters a lot more than people give it credit for. The whole point is that the heating elements kick on and off to maintain temperature, so if you put cold food in a cold oven, it takes way longer to get up to temp and the cooking time gets thrown off. With frozen stuff especially, the outer coating will start to dry out before the inside thaws if you don't preheat. I had a bag of frozen onion rings that came out soggy on one side and burnt on the other when I skipped preheating, but perfectly golden when I let it heat up first. So I gotta disagree with you on this one, I think the texture difference is pretty noticeable with a lot of frozen foods.

walker.robert28d ago

My sister @reese_taylor69 once forgot to preheat and her chicken nuggets turned out like little hockey pucks, so maybe it matters for frozen stuff.