Food expert issues warning to avoid cooking certain 'dangerous' food in air fryer
Air fryers have become a kitchen staple, but maybe we shouldn't cook everything in them.
Anyone who's bought an air fryer knows how easy it is to use, but what if it had a secret sting in the tail?
A warning from a food expert in the UK has put the cat among the pigeons by suggesting that we shouldn't be cooking our bacon in the air fryer if we can remotely avoid it, for a whole heap of reasons.
That's a bit of a downer since bacon crisps up beautifully in the air fryer - while also promising a healthier way of cooking.
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According to dietitian Brenda Peralta, though, there are loads of risks from doing things this way - and most of these come from the fact that bacon is typically quite fatty.
Peralta, a recipe developer for FeastGood.com, told HuffPost UK: "It is a fatty food, and when it is cooked in an air fryer, the fat can drip down and cause smoke or splatter. This can make the bacon difficult to cook evenly, and it can also produce a lot of smoke and odors."
Now, that might not sound immediately like a dangerous situation to many of us, but when you think about it more carefully you might spot the big red flag.
Undercooked pork meat is an absolute no-no where food poisoning is concerned - it's a quick way to give yourself a very, very uncomfortable night, or worse.
So, if your bacon is liable to cook unevenly, there could be patches of it that hold the risk of being undercooked, something you'll really want to avoid.
Even before that part, there's nothing like fat dripping and splattering to put a downer on your meal prep - with the full knowledge that you'll have to laboriously clean it up later.
Plus, Peralta said bacon is often quite large, meaning it's tricky to cook lots in the air fryer at once - not a good shout if you're catering for a crowd.
Still, that leaves a lot of categories of food open to cooking in an air fryer without nearly so much hesitation.
After all, air fryers open up quite a big world of simple cooking, and have gained a huge reputation in the last few years for being both easy to use and really economical from an energy point of view.
If you're cooking smaller meals they're really efficient, although recent advice suggests that bigger meals might be cheaper to cook in a traditional oven after all.