With an Instant Pot, an induction burner, and a toaster oven you can make anything that would require a normal kitchen, just in smaller portions (as in, you aren't cooking a whole turkey or a giant casserole).
On that note, I've been wondering about the recent hype about "air fryers", which - best I can tell, after looking into it repeatedly - are basically countertop, underpowered version of fan ovens that have been, in my life, a standard appliance in every kitchen I've ever seen. But maybe it's a sign of worsening economical prospects of the generation - people no longer own, only rent, increasingly worse quality apartments, so a basic kitchen with a fridge, a stove, an oven and maybe dishwasher and microwave, are things people no longer can rely on, or expect to have?
The one advantage that air fryers have over standard convection ovens (IMHO) is that you can make smaller portions, and because these products are designed to cook small portions they can direct a ton of heat at the food, cooking it very quickly. Prepackaged meals' instructions usually mirror my experience as well, saying that cooking in an air fryer will require less cook time compared to an oven, and a drastically lower temperature as the heating element is literally right next to the food as the air circulates the heat.
Otherwise, if you already have a convection oven and don't mind waiting a bit longer, I don't see a good reason for purchasing an air fryer (other than the aforementioned advantage).
I used to dismiss air fryers as just a crappy benchtop oven, but Minute Food did a cool video explaining why that's an overly reductive view and they're actually kind cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AASP4P5vRAA
It really does work better than my conventional oven.
Not so much underpowered, but rather faster heat, higher fan speed and smaller (so proportionally higher powered but only useful for smaller portions). That makes it more convenient for many people than a regular convection oven. Not to say they are not over hyped, but they have their niche.
Maybe having modular devices that can do things as necessary and then be stowed are more practical than having large appliances bolted into counters taking space? I think that it is impractical for everyone in the world to have as much space as we currently think we need. We can get along just fine with smaller living spaces -- it is not a sign of poverty to be efficient.
I have an older "convection" wall oven which I think probably has something like a $10 fan added to a regular oven BOM. From what I can tell if you put the item to be cooked on a cooling rack set in a baking tray, you have something close enough to an air fryer to be no different. Of course, people in small apartments have had toaster ovens forever so maybe an air fryer is just the modern replacement for that.
My stove came with "convection bake" and "convection roast" settings on the oven. Then some time after purchase I was offered to download an "air fryer" mode, but I would have to enable the wifi connection on my stove and use a smartphone app, which I do not want to do. Am I really missing much? Can a full-size home oven also be an effective air-fryer?
My guess is that it's some useless mode like microwave ovens have a zillion of but which are perfectly straightforward to simulate with the right temp/power and time settings.
I own a full modern kitchen (your mid-range appliances; full induction stove and a modern convection oven that even steams). My no-name air fryer makes crunchier fries than my convection oven.
Yeah, my “dream” kitchen that I’ll never have would have those instead of a range. And maybe a big slow cooker that could do a turkey.
Edit: oh yeah, add an air fryer and bread machine. And kettle obvs. Preheats water for a pasta pot faster than the stove. Immersion >> conduction heating.
The amount spent on a range buys a lot of gadgets. Not even wiring one up saves a circuit and dedicated run.
How many people are you cooking for? I find that a dishwasher when only used for one or two people is more of a nuisance than washing dishes as they are used, mostly because you have to basically use all of your dishes before running it.
You cannot achieve a dishwasher quality with your hands only. Partially because of the temperature, partially because of chemicals. I will never even try to wash wine glasses by hands.
If you wash by hand you create a lot of friction so I wouldn't underestimate it. You'll likely also have less detergent residue on your dishes if you wash by hand, which apparently could be good for keeping your gut lining intact.
While all these are valid points, you just have to compare hand- and machine-washed glasses once and will never confuse them again. I believe that standard machine cycle includes enough rinsing to wash off detergent, but you may do another rinse just in case.
If I want squeaky-clean glasses, I clean them by hand so I can't say that I relate to your experience. Perhaps the dishwashing detergent that you use contains different chemicals.
Might also be because people misuse the dishwasher a lot - by overloading the machine past capacity, and then running an underpowered (or "eco") program. All those other programs are on the dishwasher for a reason, and it's not to trick the user into wasting more water.
If you can get one of those countertop convention ovens (typically marketed as an air fryer/toaster oven combo) you can do quite a bit of what an oven/range can do. I use mine more than my actual oven now, and with some creativity I could probably use it almost entirely if I didn't have a range.
Just want to second this. My family of four have been waiting for more than a year for our new kitchen (long and boring story) and we’ve managed fine after buying two of these to get by. And we enjoy cooking.
So if you’re just starting out this is a great buy. A full size stove will have a larger element and better heat control but you won’t notice. And they are way better than a gas camp stove.
If you upgrade to a Breville Control Freak (not cheap, but cheaper than your new kitchen) and you get used to it (it require recalibrating your concept of how to use a stove a bit), you might find that you never use your new stove in your new kitchen.
The Control Freak has:
Better heat control. (That’s the entire point. It smokes essentially everything else in the market.)
Painless preheating. Put on your pan, turn it on and set a temp, and go gather ingredients. Done. (Warning: it can substantially overshoot with cast iron, so be a bit careful.)
Element size: it seems to produce more even heat on a 12” or even 14” pan than most gas ranges, even fancy ones. And you can use it with cheaper pans that have thick bottoms and thin sides without burning everything on the side. Your gas burner won’t be able to do this.
Did I mention the heat control? You can cook pancakes without messing up the first batch (350F). You can do soft scrambled eggs pretty easily (240F or so and turn it off a bit before they look done). You can make chai easily (211F or so, then reduce to 185F before adding milk, then wait at least 20 min if not much longer). Perfect golden onions: 300F or so and stir occasionally — they won’t burn. Perfect chopped garlic: 230F or even cooler and be patient, although this is a matter of taste.
Caution: the numbers are a bit different with different pans.
It even doubles as a pretty good deep fryer if you’re careful.
It caused me to change my opinion of cast iron skillets a bit: the high thermal may actually mostly be a crutch that compensates a bit for the lack of closed loop control in most stoves. Once you have closed-loop control, I suspect what you actually want is just enough thermal mass to get good control performance combined with enough thermal conductivity to maintain a decent temperature under inhomogeneous loads (pancakes, onions, etc) while those loads are busily sinking heat from the parts of the pan they’re on. Cast iron has under half the thermal conductivity of aluminum.
It also doubles as a (very silly) rice cooker! Add a program to bring the pan to 230 F on slow intensity followed by a 2 minute timer. This will slowly simmer the water then stop cooking right after the water is all evaporated, which is exactly the process of dedicated rice cookers.
Holy crap. That is an insane price. Seems like it's priced for commercial use.
I've had a thought in the back of my head to use a temperature probe like that in a temperature control loop on my induction cooktop, could probably do it with an arduino but I also don't want to make my kitchen an electronics project.
Is there nothing like this that is priced reasonably?
We are going to buy an induction hob anyway - we haven't cooked with gas for years - but this is certainly very interesting! But you are right, it is super expensive.
IMO it’s super expensive for a standalone unit, and it’s super expensive for what it ought to cost to make (it’s a fairly nice induction hob plus a knob, a so-so display, and a molded silicone skirt around a temperature sensor on a spring — $1500 is absurd given what induction hobs cost).
OTOH an actual built in stove seems to run that much or more, and the ones with fancy names are about that price per element, so if it replaces a built in stove, it’s not so bad.
I had hopes for njori.com, but it’s not clear they know how to make a product. It seems like they overdesigned a product and then tried to get it made by ODMs without having their own in house engineering capabilities.
Perhaps a single burner induction cooktop is in your budget, which you can use to brown/fry meat.