It's Wednesday, around 6 p.m. It's been a busy day, but I'm already carving a perfectly roasted chicken on my favorite ebony cutting board, the bird's juices spilling out from under crispy skin and filling up the board's reservoir like a moat.
For years, Ina Garten's roasted chicken — or some variation of it — has been something of a Sunday tradition for me. It's not overly decadent or particularly involved, but it's reserved for Sundays because of its 2-hour total cooking time. Now, the same recipe, but adapted for the air fryer, hits the table in well under an hour.
After months of owning an air fryer and experimenting mostly with versions of traditionally fried foods, such as wings, fries and chicken cutlets, I made my first air fryer roast chicken on a whim. Stunned by the speedy cooking time — 25% faster than traditional roasting — tender meat and impossibly crispy skin without the usual tablespoon of butter, I haven't put a bird in the oven since.
Of all the kitchen tools I've collected, and there are many, the air fryer has shifted my cooking paradigm the most, making cooking easier, faster and more foolproof. Few and far between are air fryer fails, and frequent are the discoveries of something I'd been "making wrong" all along until I roasted it quickly under spiraling superconvection heat.
Save for the rare batch of cookies or large cut of meat for a dinner party, the air fryer has all but replaced my oven. I plan meals around it: If a recipe calls for the use of my oven — meat loaf, roasted salmon, charred cauliflower — I consider how I might adapt it for the air fryer.
Celebrated chef and restaurateur Stephanie Izard shares my enthusiasm. "It's such a versatile tool," the James Beard Award winner tells me. "I use mine all the time for dinners," she adds, naming fried rice, marinated chicken and salmon as a few of her go-tos. "It's like making one-pot meals — but roasted!"
We're not alone.
According to a CNET survey, over 70% of US adults either own or plan to own an air fryer within the year. Additional studies estimate that about 60% of American households have already made the purchase.
To put that in perspective: Since the turn of the century, only the smartphone has matched this level of rapid, widespread adoption for a new category of consumer technology. And no other kitchen appliance even comes close. Even at its peak, the limited available sales data suggest that the Instant Pot never reached such heights. Instant Pot sales have steadily declined following the multicooker boom, and the company that made most of them filed for bankruptcy in 2023. The air fryer, meanwhile, has rocketed from trendy novelty to everyday essential in record time and shows no signs of slowing.
Guy Fieri, the chef, restaurateur and impresario of TV cooking shows, is another high-profile acolyte. "An air fryer has a permanent place on my kitchen counter," Fieri tells me. He cites wings, roasted potatoes and leftover egg rolls as a few staples that are regulars in his air fryer. "You can crisp, roast or reheat and still get that pro-level finish every time."
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