COSMOS MAGAZINE

New air fryer for Christmas?  Use it wisely

Air fryers certainly have their uses – particularly in speed – you may want to re-read the instructions before cooking. Like all new cooking methods, they can carry some risks.

“It was raised that there had been sporadic cases of food poisoning – and here's good recognition of our food detectives out there, normally the local council or local health authorities,” Buchtmann tells Cosmos.

“Normally, you get a cluster of food poisoning: people have [gone to] a specific place or there's a problem with a specific food. But these were just sort of random, scattered around the country.”

Eventually, they figured out the common thread was crumbed food made in air fryers. The central risk of an air fryer, according to Buchtmann, is not heating food up enough – particularly crumbed food.

“So it wasn't a specific food, it was just a specific way of cooking. And when you think back to when microwaves first came in, there were also similar little outbreaks because people didn't quite know how to use microwaves properly.”

“People think air fryers are little ovens, which essentially is what they are, but they do heat a little bit quicker… Crumbed products like schnitzel or parmigiana, that look cooked on the outside, may not be cooked all the way through on the inside.”

So, how do you avoid getting sick with your air fryer? Check the instructions on food packages for any specific food advice.

“The general advice we put out to people is ... look at the instructions that came with the air fryer, which gives you recipes and advice on how to cook things,” says Buchtmann.

Buchtmann suggests adding  “meat thermometer” to  the request for the air fryer. “Mince products, sausages, burgers, poultry, must be cooked to 75°C in the centre, otherwise it's a risk of food poisoning. And you can't do that by looking at it. You have to have an actual thermometer.