- Hey guys, we're back in the test kitchen today,
and I'm really excited to test this new gadget.
It's the Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven
that runs for about $120.
Basically, this is a seven-in-one miniature convection oven,
that can sit on your counter.
So what are the seven functionalities of this?
Let's try to list them all?
Air fry, broil, roast, toast, dehydrate, rotisserie, bake.
I got it!
Was that right?
- [Producer] That's good. - Yes.
- So right away I have some concerns about this gadget.
First it's seven-in-one.
And when something does too many things in one,
I'm always skeptical, just because
if one thing breaks, is the whole thing gonna break?
And there's just too many functionalities going on.
The second thing is that it only
heats up to 400 degrees, which is low.
Obviously, at your home oven,
you can heat up to much higher.
Today we're gonna test four of the functions
out of the seven, just because
some of these functions intertwine.
Like a broil and toast, it's pretty much the same thing.
And it's just a question of different levels of heat.
So first test, we'll dehydrate.
We'll make some apple chips.
The second test we'll air fry french fries.
Third function we'll broil, sear a steak,
and fourth we'll rotisserie cook a chicken.
We are dehydrating.
I'm just gonna cut up this apple pretty thin,
and lay it on these trays.
(upbeat music)
(oven beeping)
Anyway, okay, pressing dehydrate.
And then we're gonna dehydrate this at 135.
Listen, dehydrating isn't a complicated functionality.
You can do it in a regular oven.
I love to dehydrate.
I do it almost every night at my restaurants,
and honestly the one thing that's concerning is volume.
To do one dehydrated apple for six hours,
just doesn't really make sense to me.
It's a waste of electricity.
Okay, that's it, now we wait, six hours, bye!
Something's happening in here.
Everything is flying around
because there's no moisture in the food.
So now the fan is a little too strong,
'cause it's flying my food around inside.
(upbeat music)
Okay, it's been six hours.
And right away I'm noticing that the ones that flew up
hit the heat source and got burnt.
So yes, big concern.
Other than that it looks pretty good.
I mean it did work.
I'm just gonna taste it of course.
Yep, I think they are good apple chips.
It doesn't seem that efficient.
And if you're dehydrating, you can probably
just do it in your oven,
because it has a lot more surface area.
Okay, moving on to our air frying.
We're using fresh potato.
And we'll just 'em, I mean, I love fries
and I'm a real believer in actually frying them,
'cause they're called french fries.
And honestly if I don't have to take out a pot of oil
to get french fries, that's a win already.
And we're just gonna toss them in a little bit of oil.
Just like a tablespoon or two, oil.
I feel like like there's too many fries
for this little basket.
And mind you guys this was only two potatoes.
Let's just try putting them in and see how much fits.
But you don't wanna overcrowd this basket,
because then you're gonna steam the potato
instead of frying it.
So I'd say, yeah I don't think
you should put more than that.
We have a lot left in here.
So about one and half potatoes in this basket.
It's all that's gonna fit.
Stick it in there.
And it says not to preheat, so we're not preheating.
We're just adding it straight in.
All right.
(oven beeping)
Close, we will air fry at 400.
I just hit the rotate button
so that it rotates as it air fries,
which I think is pretty genius
because the regular air fryers, it's just a basket,
and every so often you had to take it out and shake it,
so that it doesn't steam.
But this one, it rotates it for you.
So basically, it's tossing it, while air frying.
(oven beeping)
Finally!
I got fries, just for myself and no one else!
Fries!
They sound crispy.
Salt..
(fries shaking)
All right.
Have a little taste.
The thing about air frying,
is that I think it really sucks out
all the moisture in the fry,
so it's a little dry to be honest.
They're crispy but they're dry.
Whereas when you deep fry it,
it really seals in that moisture
and it's really fast and it's crispy and light inside.
That's a big difference obviously,
but we are testing the air frying method.
It did work.
It worked pretty well.
Moving on to our next test,
we're gonna cook a steak with the broil function.
Obviously we're gonna cook it at the highest temp,
which is 400 in this case.
I'm a little bit concerned just because cooking a steak
in any gadget is always concerning for me.
Salt, pepper.
For steak you want the temp to be
as high as possible for that beautiful sear.
But we'll see how this works out.
On the top rack.
And I would say, let's start at two minutes
and see what it looks like.
It's very strange because you put the steak in the oven
and you want to hear it sear, right,
because it's a steak.
But it's just kind of just sitting here.
It's not gonna create that beautiful sear.
So it's been two minutes and we're just gonna
take a quick peek.
It really didn't do anything.
(laughing)
We're just give it two more minutes
and then check it again.
It's basically just steaming in there,
because it's not searing.
And I'm curious to see what's gonna happen
with the fat content as well.
I'm gonna check on the steak.
See, it did better, it's basically cooking
all the way through, but not searing.
It's a grey steak.
I would say at this point, this steak is cooked.
Probably about medium to mid-rare.
But I don't wanna cook it any longer,
even though there's no sear,
just 'cause we don't wanna overcook it.
So I think this is what we have.
The steak is done.
It's not seared.
Really wouldn't recommend doing this at home,
even though we didn't cut into it yet.
I can already tell that a lot of the moisture
and the fat has dripped off,
which means that we're probably gonna get a drier steak.
It looks like steak that you would get at Denny's.
- [Producer] Yeah!
(laughing together)
- Okay so my steak rested.
Gonna slice into it and see how it tastes.
Okay, we got a good cook.
It's a nice mid-rare.
(soft music)
(chuckles)
So obviously there is absolutely no crust.
So I feel like I'm just eating the inside of a steak.
I'm really missing that beautiful crisp layer.
It's just, yeah, I don't know, it's a little sad.
Maybe we could have achieved the crust
if we cooked it a little bit longer,
but then the whole steak would have been overcooked.
So I would say that it's perfectly cooked
inside the middle, but obviously no sear.
So this is a big problem.
Perhaps the most exciting moment of the day,
finally we get to rotisserie a chicken.
I would say this is exciting
because it's hard to find any gadget
that does rotisserie chicken, especially at home.
This is something that you don't see often.
So I'm really excited to see how this turns out.
So a simple salt and pepper with a little bit of oil.
This is your rotisserie spit.
Yep, pretty self-explanatory.
You just put it through the chicken.
All right.
So our spit is in, and we're just gonna
secure the wings, and the legs.
All right, chicken's going in.
All right.
All right, chicken's in.
(oven beeping)
Roasting the chicken at 380
for about 30 to 40 minutes,
and of course, you can see
your chicken rotating which is awesome.
It looks great.
The wings are flopping around, but I think it's fine.
(oven door clicking)
The chicken looks beautiful!
Look at it!
Oh my gosh!
It's nice and brown, it's crispy!
It looks pretty even, evenly browned all throughout.
The great thing about doing the rotisserie
is you're getting browning
on all sides of the chicken which is great.
And when you roast a chicken in the oven,
you don't really get that because
the bottom is obviously sitting on the rack,
or sitting on the pan.
It looks super-moist and obviously because it was rotating
it was rotating in its own juices, and its own fat.
So we're gonna let it rest for a few minutes.
It looks amazing, look at that!
Super-juicy, see this, that juice.
And it's cooked really nicely, actually.
It's pulling away pretty easily.
Super-moist breast and then legs
cooked all the way through obviously.
Let's try a piece of the breast,
'cause this is what tends to get dry, usually.
But look, it looks super-moist.
Hmmm, the skin is nice and rendered and crispy.
The meat is super-moist.
It's juicy!
That is juicy.
I mean, way better than what you get in an oven.
All right so wing.
This is crackling.
And with rotisserie chicken,
actually, the wing is one of my favorite parts.
(wing cracking)
Hmmm.
Hear that skin, it's perfect, so good.
This function is the best
out of all the functions we tested today.
You can even do a porchetta.
You can do a smaller bird.
I mean as long as it fits inside this oven,
I think it's a great function.
Okay so overall summary.
So starting with dehydrating,
it did work, but for the amount of product
it dehydrates, it's just not really that worth it.
It blows around the product after it's dried,
touches the heating element and then it ended up burning.
And then the air frying, I would say it worked pretty well.
I like the fact that it rotates,
so it was getting a lot of the even heating.
But the quantity is not that much.
Obviously it doesn't fit as much as we want it to.
And then the broiling, I would say, it didn't really
sear the steak that well.
I would not recommend doing a steak.
But maybe for a fish it would work, and obviously for toast
or something that's a little bit lighter,
it would have worked fine.
But what I really loved about this is the rotisserie.
The chicken turned out so awesome, for less than an hour.
It cooked it perfectly!
So I think overall, maybe all seven different functions
did not turn out the way we wanted it to,
but I think that for $120, it does a lot of things.
So if you're gonna get an air fryer anyway,
why not spend a few extra dollars and get
more functionality out of it.
(upbeat music)