The Pots and The Pans - Everything you need to know about appliance shopping.

Why are we so obsessed with Air Fry? The sole purpose of using and air fryer is to achieve the taste of fried food with a fraction of the oil. But most users have come to find many other positive outcomes of using air fryers for various other things, such as reheating leftovers and even baking.   The problem with air fryers is that they are small. The average air fryer can only hold 2-3 servings at a time, which can make cooking larger quantities of food very difficult. Thus leading to the rise in ovens with air fry capabilities. "But air fry is just using convection in an oven!" Well yes and no. The convection element is important to using air fry - but it is not the same. For those unfamiliar with convection cooking, a fan distributes air evenly throughout the oven allowing items on the top rack and the bottom rack to cook evenly. So you can use multiple racks for cooking. There are several types of convection: True European Convection and Fan Convection. True...

That is the question! There is much controversy over self cleaning oven. They are immensely popular with consumers, but in the appliance world...not so much. Self cleaning oven uses high temperatures to burn off grease and debris leftover from normal use of your oven. It effectively eliminates the use of chemical cleaners and is the preferred way of cleaning given the convenience of set it and forget it. However they do pose some dangers. A self cleaning cycle get get to temperatures upwards of 800 and 900 degrees Fahrenheit and the oven door locks closed as a safety measure. The problem is if your oven is too dirty these particles will create a lot of smoke and a heavy odor. The high temperatures also present the potential to set fire. There are plenty of house-fire horror stories out there from homeowners using the self cleaning cycle and certainly those are few and far between when looking at the big picture, but still a looming danger. But the main reason to not self-clean your ove...