Food dehydrator vs air fryer are wonderful kitchen appliances of our modern time. They simplify our cooking process while allowing us to enjoy healthy and delicious food, making our life much more convenient.
It is nice to have both in our kitchen. However, if your space, your budget, or your preference only allows one machine, we will put both on a test to help you decide which machine fits you, your everyday needs, and your kitchen more.
Air Fryer
The air fryer has become a staple in the home kitchen because of its convenience, versatility. An air fryer usually comes in its cylindrical basket shape or the normal oven’s shape.
Function
Air fryers cook with hot air circulation coming from the heating system inside the machine and a built-in fan that blows this air throughout the inside of the cooking compartment. This allows your food to be cooked evenly and deliciously.
Advantage
Versatility
You can cook all kinds of tasty dishes with your air fryer. You can cook any kind of meat and vegetable deliciously in your air fryer with a few drops of oil. The air fryer makes excellent French fries with a minimum amount of oil. It can also fry frozen food like mozzarella sticks or chicken wings.
You can also use it to reheat your leftovers instead of your microwave. You can use it to dehydrate your food. Thus, it can also substitute an oven as it can bake delicious cooking and bread. The possibilities are endless with this delightful compact machine.
Healthier food
The air fryer is marketed as a machine that allows you to fry food without using too much oil (a few drops or a slight spray will do), which can make your tasty fried food much healthier. In fact, air fryer food can imitate the taste, the texture, and the look of fried food well because the machine uses a closed circulation of hot air and the minimum amount of oil to dry out the surface of your food and give it a crispy and crunchy outside.
Efficiency
The air fryer is compacted and usually smaller than the regular oven. Hence, it does not take a long time to heat up but it can retain its heat for a longer time (which is perfect if you want your steak to be cooked evenly and deliciously). In this way, you can save a lot of electricity compared to an electric oven.
Thus, its small size means that it will not take up too much space in your kitchen.
Beginner-friendly
If cooking discourages you because you barely know the basics, you can still cook delicious meals with an air fryer. All you have to do is to prepare your food and let the air fryer do the cooking. The result will amaze you all the time.
Disadvantage
Because of its small size, an air fryer may be inefficient in handling a large volume of food. Thus, if you want to serve a big family, an air fryer is not suitable for the task and cannot save you from traditional cooking. You can divide your food into smaller batches to use the air fryer but the task would be much more time-consuming and potentially frustrating.
Food Dehydrator
A dehydrator is a useful device to dry food and allows you to keep your food for a longer time. You can dry fruit, vegetables, or any kind of food with this machine.
Function
A food dehydrator uses its built-in fan to blow out and circulate warm air to remove the moisture content of your food. Like an air fryer, the air is also circulated inside this machine, which makes it dry food more effectively and thoroughly.
A dehydrator can be used to dehydrate herbs, fruits, veggies, meat at the appropriate temperature. You can consult your manual to adjust the temperature depending on the food you want to dry. Additionally, this machine can be used to ferment your yogurt or re-crisp your baked goods.
Advantage
Healthier and tastier dried food
This machine is a great tool to DIY your snacks without any artificial colors and addictive store-bought snacks might have. Thus, the low temperature of a dehydrator will retain all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrition of your dried food, which is usually destroyed with high cooking temperatures.
If you dry your favorite fruit, removing moisture will intensify the sugar level of your fruit and make the dried fruit even sweeter than fresh fruit.
You can add your flavor to your dried food. Let it be salt, pepper, oil, sugar, anything is possible with this DIY process. When you dry your meat, you can also add your favorite flavor and herbs to your dried meat.
Save your budget
You can buy food in bulk, dry them, and stock it up for later use. They will not go bad because moisture (the environment that allows bacteria and fungi to grow and spoil food) is reduced to a safe level in this process.
You can also save the cost of buying store-bought snacks now that you can make them on your own.
Convenience
Dried food is much more lightweight than normal food, which makes them perfect for outdoor activities. If you are camping, you can bring dehydrated meat and veggies to your camping site and use them for your delicious recipe.
Disadvantage
A food dehydrator can be noisy when it is operating. Thus, it usually takes a lot of time to dehydrate food with this machine. Yet, other than these minor inconveniences, it is a great machine.
FAQs
Which is better, Food Dehydrator Vs Air Fryer?
An air fryer would win because of its incredible versatility. An air fryer can also perform what a dehydrator can do in addition to its regular functions that allow you to cook a wider variety of dishes. Hence, we would say an air fryer is better. But a food dehydrator is more specialized in drying food, hence, if all you need is to dry your food, you should get a dehydrator instead of an air fryer.
Is a food dehydrator worth it?
It is up to you to decide whether a food dehydrator is worth it. Most dehydrators are relatively affordable, but they can put a lot of pressure on your electricity bill. Yet, if you want your food to be dried perfectly, a food dehydrator is the most ideal option.
Do all air fryers dehydrate?
A lot of air fryers now come with a dehydrating function that you can conveniently use. You can also use the lower heat setting of a standard air fryer to dehydrate your food. However, if your air fryer cannot stand a longer operating time (a couple of hours), you should not use it to dehydrate in order to maintain your air fryer.
Here is a useful video on how to dehydrate food with your air fryer for your further information:
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Conclusion
Now you have everything you need to know to decide between an air fryer and a dehydrator. Whichever your choice is, both are great investments that you will never regret.
