Why You Should Ditch Your Oven For The Air Fryer On Hot Summer Days

There's no denying that summer is the best season for hosting backyard barbecues or planning the perfect picnic, but sometimes the weather gets too hot for comfort, especially indoors. Even if your home has air conditioning, the cost of keeping your space cool adds up when temperatures are high from June through August. To keep yourself from roasting without constantly running your A.C., consider changing up how you cook, starting with the appliances you use.

If an older, wiser relative has ever told you to avoid using your oven during the summer, you should heed their advice. While ovens aren't designed to warm your home (and using them to do so is unsafe), the appliance does send a ton of heat into the surrounding air from the time you pre-heat it to the time that it finally cools down. But skyrocketing summer temperatures shouldn't stop you from enjoying oven-baked barbecue baby back ribs or roasted veggies. For foods that normally go in the oven at high temperatures (or for hours at a time), turn to your trusty air fryer instead.

While your air fryer still circulates hot air to cook food like a convection oven, this countertop kitchen appliance operates much more efficiently than your oven thanks to its small size, so it doesn't need to run for nearly as long. That means you're less likely to lose your cool in the kitchen on the hottest days of the year.

If you're trying to limit how hot your home gets this summer, an air fryer could be your saving grace. Whether you're craving french fries or a crispy air fryer parmesan chicken recipe, the compact appliance can cook all kinds of foods typically reserved for the oven. While its small footprint could limit the size of some meals, it can also decrease their standard cooking times by half, depending on the recipe.

In the mood for homemade blackberry cobbler or some other dish that might not fare well in the air fryer? Pressure cookers, slow cookers, and toaster ovens are other great alternatives to a big conventional oven. Between all these compact appliances, you might not even need to turn your oven on all summer.

A bonus of using smaller appliances during the hotter months is that you don't even necessarily need to use them inside. Since they're portable and only require a plug, try putting them out on the porch or patio to keep the heat out of your home altogether. While this setup might sound strange, it's not unprecedented. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries (i.e., before air conditioning), summer kitchens separate from the main home were used for cooking "outdoors" in Europe and America during the warmest months to keep indoor spaces cooler. Placing your air fryer or other compact appliances outside can accomplish the same goal.