TikTok convinced me to spend £100 on an air fryer, and as a lazy cook, I regret nothing

For a very long time, I resisted the pull of TikTok. “I’m in my late twenties,” I assumed, “and TikTok is for youngsters who’re actually good at doing hair.” As such, I resolved to stay to my very own generational mode of expression: posting memes of Ian Beale on Twitter.

Nonetheless, as all cultural phenomena do, TikTok ultimately caught up with me as movies from the app grew to become so omnipresent on different social media channels that it was unavoidable.

It was the meals clips that actually pulled me in, and persuaded me to make an account – it’s always the food clips with me. Because the days of Buzzfeed’s hypnotic “Tasty” movies, shot from above to indicate a faceless chef cooking a recipe (often this meant doing one thing unspeakable to doughballs), I’ve not often discovered a food prep video that I cannot watch in its entirety.

I’d wish to say that my motivation is one thing like “being comforted by the simplicity of a step-by-step course of in an unpredictable world” however actually I’m simply grasping.

I’m at my most content material when I’m watching somebody brushing garlic butter onto a carb.

It didn’t take lengthy for TikTok’s frighteningly accurate algorithm to know that the content material I wished – the clips I dwelled on slightly than scrolling previous – was recipes. I hit like on the whole lot from noodles topped with glistening fried eggs to pasta repurposed as crisps, my residence web page (or ‘FYP’ – ‘For You Web page’) rapidly grew to become 100 methods to “actually make a salad pop”.

However repeatedly, there was one factor I seen concerning the movies. I saved seeing the identical machine cropping up in the whole lot from chip recipes to Man Vs Meals-style desserts: the air fryer.

Air fryers have surged in reputation – stories counsel 25 million were sold previously two years alone – largely due to their declare to be a much less artery-clogging technique of cooking in contrast with conventional deep frying (a 2015 comparability study did present air fried meals had considerably decrease fats content material).

That is achievable as a result of the gadget doesn’t really deep fry however cooks food by way of convection, achieved by primarily blowing very popular air round no matter potatoes, greens, or TikTok-mini peanut butter pancake rolls you occur to be making. Due to this, you don’t want anyplace close to as a lot oil to realize a satisfyingly crispy, crunchy end.

So, inevitably, in the identical method that I used to be pressured by the web into downloading TikTok within the first place, I used to be quickly pushed into frantic midnight Google searches of “best air fryer” and “air fryer how a lot”.

After a lot deliberation, I added one of many market’s cheaper fashions to my basket, a £99 machine from Ninja. At this level, any point out of the truth that I, a totally grown grownup, was persuaded to spend nearly 100 English kilos on an merchandise due to TikTok will probably be blocked and reported.

When it arrived on my doorstep, my first response was that it was only a lot greater than I had anticipated and the area I had demarcated for it on the worktop merely wouldn’t minimize it: this was no two-slice toaster. I now hold it on high of my washer and ceremoniously carry it into the kitchen like Rafiki holding Simba aloft in The Lion King at any time when I want it.

Regardless of the preliminary setback, I wished to make use of it instantly. So straight again to the scene of the crime, I scrolled TikTok for the movies I’d bookmarked for this momentous maiden voyage. I’d just lately picked up some gochujang [Korean red chilli paste], so I went with a recipe that mixed the notoriously difficult-to-crisp tofu with a delicious-looking chilli glaze.

The cooking course of was remarkably straightforward: I tossed my cubes of tofu in starchy cornflour and seasoning and put it within the air fryer’s pull out basket, set the temperature and timer, and off it went. To my delight, when the 12 minutes have been up, I had tofu with a pleasingly robust outer pores and skin and a comfortable inside, higher than I had ever managed to prepare dinner (with out deep frying) earlier than.

Since then, I’ve cooked all kinds in my air fryer – chips, salmon, but extra tofu – and it has turn out to be a much-loved staple of my kitchen as somebody who very a lot enjoys cooking however can be crucially fairly lazy.

The easy act of chucking one thing within the drawer and usually trusting that it’ll prove properly is a reduction to come back residence to on the finish of a protracted day, and in addition makes me look a good bit better at food prep than I really am.

Sure, I could have been influenced by TikTok, however I’ve to confess that in contrast to the issues I’ve purchased due to, say, Instagram (a cardigan with furry sleeves and collar, for instance), it really appears like an honest funding and I don’t remorse succumbing to such blatant promoting when the gadget has proved it’s greater than a one-hit marvel.