The rise & rise of AIR FRYER TV
How a 25-year-old kitchen gadget suddenly took over telly
It all started on 23 June last year, when Denise Van Outen fronted a Channel 4 show about air fryers. The programme – starkly, yet effectively, titled Air Fryers: Are They Worth It? – was announced with the tantalising description, “Denise Van Outen lifts the lid on Britain’s air-fryer obsession and asks the questions on everyone’s lips: how do they work? What can we cook in them? And, can they really save us time and money?” Informative as it undoubtedly was, the documentary also felt like the equivalent of making an entire TV show about, say, kettles or toasters or spoons. And yet, this was just the start.
Channel 5 followed suit with the even more creatively titled Air Fryers Vs Microwaves: Which Is Better? earlier this year. Now, barely a week goes by without an air fryerbased TV show of some kind popping up on our screens. Most of them are on Channel 5, although Jamie Oliver is now getting in on the act for Channel 4.
So, it’s time to ask what is it about these seemingly magical devices that make for such enticing TV? And will our thirst for air-fryer content ever be sated?
A LOT OF HOT AIR
The big irony about these gadgets is that they’re not magic frying machines at all, just convection ovens – meaning they cook food by circulating hot air around it using a fan. But the crispy results that emerge from the free-standing appliances can seem quite magical, producing food that looks and tastes as if it’s been deep-fried. Indeed, the air fryer was invented in 2005 by a Dutchman who wanted to cook chips without having to use hot oil. The electronics company Philips unveiled the first fryer in 2010, but they really took off during the pandemic in the US, when cooks stuck at home showed off recipes that worked particularly well with these devices, and sales of air fryers rose by 20 per cent. Youtubers and Tiktokers soon embraced the air fryer possibilities, and careers have been made out of online air-frying
expertise. Now, 45 per cent of UK households own one.
TV TAKEOVER
It was inevitable the phenomenon would migrate from online to television, and sure enough, Channel 4 was first to dip its toe into air frying last summer with that Denise Van Outen docu. Now, of course, it’s Channel 5 that has become synonymous with air fryer TV, but they didn’t actually get their bandwagon going until last December with the festive Air Fryers: Christmas Made Easy. That ratings winner was soon followed by Air Fryers Vs
Microwaves: Which Is Better? (spoiler alert: air fryers are). Perhaps the most brilliantly titled Channel 5 entry into this specialist genre popped up later that month in the shape of Air Fryers: Do You Know What You’re Missing?, a fiendish philosophical question to be sure. After all, if we don’t know what we’re missing, then we’re not really missing it, are we?
Anyway, since then, C5 has gone full-on with its recent four-part Air Fryers: Made Easy series. But perhaps the pièce de resistance – and the ultimate proof that air fryers have really arrived – comes in the form of Jamie Oliver’s Air Fryer Meals currently airing on Monday evenings on Channel 4. After all, if Jamie can embrace the air fryer more, then surely we all can?
Quite how many more programmes about this gadget we need remains to be seen. But we do hope one of the channels will make the true-life origins-story drama we’re all waiting for…
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