From: sherwood@adobe.com (Geoffrey Sherwood)
Subject: Re: Hot air cooker/Good or bad?
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:41:10 GMT

I bought a hot-air type cooker a month or so ago and am very pleased with
it.  It is the Betty Crocker brand ($100 from Service Merchandise).  It has
about 300 more watts than the Galloping Gormet brand and was slightly
cheaper.  I use it on almost a daily basis and the only problem I have with
it is that it trips the house circuit breaker when it, the microwave, and
the deep freeze are all running (I know, the circuit is overloaded and its not
the fault of the appliance).  I use it mostly in conjunction with the
microwave (hence the tripping).  There are a lot of decent frozen quick foods
(like burritos, pocket sandwiches and the like) which do fairly well in the
microwave.  I don't like the texture of microwaved bread, though.  What I do
is nuke the product for a minute or so less than it calls for, pop it in the
hot-air cooker at 350F for 3 or 4 minutes and it is perfect.  It also does
wonders on the little frozen pizzas.  Every once in a while I clean the bowl,
which is a trivial operation.  I also looked at the Harvest Maid (I think the
brand was) which is the one I've seen on the infomercials.  It was made of
lexan rather than glass and claimed to heat faster.  On the other had, it
was $180, and I know what to expect from a glass bowl.  Lexan in cooking is
an unknown to me (made a fine windshield for a plane I once had, but I never
tried to cook on it!).

Other things it does well is hash browns (the pre-formed patties), frozen fish
fillets, etc.  All things that an oven could do, but this is much faster.  The
thing is up to 350F or so in a couple of minutes at most so I rarely bother to
preheat.  I have yet to try french fries, so I can't say anything about that.

I tried something for the first time last night and it worked great.  I keep
frozen chicken thighs in the freezer (I buy them by the bag).  In the past I
have stuck them in water for a quick defrost, which ain't that quick and
fairly messy.  There is a setting on the heater unit for 'thaw' so I figured
I'd give it a try.  In ten minutes (perhaps less, I checked after ten) the
meat was perfectly thawed, with no cooked spots that microwave defrosting
gives.  Admittedly the meat is only about 1/2" thick, but the process was
almost absurdly quick and easy (compared to what I have gone through before).
I will try it on other things, of course (I have lots of chicken leg and
breast quarters in the deep freeze as well.  If it thaws them out in a similar
amount of time I well be extremely pleased.

On another note, one of the best purchases I have made in a long time was
the deep freeze.  For $400 (from monkey wards) I got a 19 or so cu ft
upright freezer.  Wonderful -- if I don't feel like cooking (or my wife doesn't
want to wait for me to cook something!), we always have the option of grabbing
something out of the freezer.  And with a freezer that large we have a fairly
large selection of things we can grab, as well has the aforementioned chicken,
frozen veggies, pot stickers, hash browns, etc, etc.  I highly recommend them.

geoff sherwood
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking