Christmas is fast approaching and this week ideas are already turning to what to cook and when, and for how long. And for many households it’s not just about getting everything accomplished in time, but also making sure your payments do not go through the roof as you jam all your home equipment on for the next few days cooking for the entire household.
Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis has beforehand outlined how people should use their oven to cook Christmas dinner, not an air fryer. The stylish kitchen equipment has become a bit of a sensation in current years as people look to discover cheaper methods of cooking their dinner than working a huge conventional oven.
But Martin Lewis has tried to define that it’s not always higher to use an air fryer or a microwave over a conventional oven. Back in November 2023, Martin Lewis spoke on ITV’s This Morning where he stepped in after listening to a caller say they were going to cook their Christmas dinner in an air fryer.
Martin advised the hosts of ITV’s This Morning: “I heard you on the show mention somebody is going to cook a Christmas dinner in an air fryer, is that right?
“If that’s been done for energy reasons I would be somewhat skeptical whether that is a good idea. If it’s been done for taste, I don’t wanna get involved.
“The benefit of an oven is when you’re cooking a lot for a lot of people and you can fill all the racks and have it on consistently.
“Air fryers are good for small things that cook quickly.
“If you’re gonna have to use your air fryer 15 different times for different items, generally on energy usage you’d be better off to use an oven.
“So, it’s an interesting thought because air fryers are all the rage. They’re great for cooking small amounts. Be careful on it.”
Speaking later on his The Martin Lewis Podcast, accessible on BBC Sounds, Spotify and Apple Music, the finance professional set out precisely how and when you should and should not use an air fryer when cooking the Christmas dinner utilizing his ‘rule of thumb’.
Martin Lewis said: “Let me give you my simple rule of thumb.
“First of all, discover the wattage of the equipment you’re utilizing. If you’ve got a heated gilet, it might be 50 watts. When I discuss about ‘heating the home’ it is a lot cheaper to have a heated gilet or something that just heats you rather than heating the entire room.
“Then remember 1,000 watts is a Kilowatt. And you pay roughly 34p per Kw per hour. So if you had a heated gilet on for an hour, it’s around a 20th of 34p which is around 1.7p per hour.
“Now an oven is sometimes 1-2000w so you’re paying around 34p or 68p an hour. An oven is not always utilizing all the wattage as it’s heating up and then topping up.
“A microwave is also 1000W so per minute it’s the same cost as an oven, but things done in the microwave when you’re cooking a one-off, a one off jacket potato for example, is far more efficient because it’s 10 minutes in the microwave, it might be an hour and a half in the oven.
“So if you’ve got a turkey in there that may nicely be efficient if you’re cooking tons of stuff in there and it’s on for a couple of hours. That may nicely be efficient if you’re cooking tons of stuff.
“But if you’ve got something small and simple in there, it’s probably cheaper and that’s where the microwave and also the air fryers tend to come into their own because they’re better at cooking single objects.”
He also talked about a methodology to cook a turkey that was outlined by a caller, called ‘spatchcocking’, otherwise identified as ‘butterfly’. This is when you break the fowl’s bones and unfold it out instead of cooking it entire.
By doing so, you can scale back the quantity of time the chicken takes to cook, thereby saving more money on working your oven (or air fryer!).
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