Plum Chef Air Fryer – A Must Have Kitchen Gadget

You see, I’m a Tech Guy but my wife is a foodie. I’m on a first name basis with all the stars of the Food Channel and my wife is an amazingly great cook. While I think I have a few brain cells she constantly throws out cooking and food term words that I have never heard before.

So what you are going to get here is a mix of John being a Tech guy reviewing some hardware, and my wife cooking up some goodness. We make a great team.

Plum Chef Air Fryer 11 QT

First up the model number of this specific air fryer is ATS-10K-001. That is the 11 QT, 2 slice version. Current cost is around $93 on Amazon. The unit is attractive and well built yet light enough to move around easily. It has a glass, pull down door and when turned on a bright interior light lets you see what is going on. That’s all good. Time for some John’s Tech Blog stuff.

Testing

The first thing I wanted to do was test the oven for its ability to reach temperature. It has one single heating element and I was wondering if it would hit 450℉ (232 ℃). Not only did it but I had to back down the temp a bit to get my IR camera close to it to get a picture. The excessive heat gave me just a couple of seconds to get in there and take a picture before the IR sensor would overload. I experienced this with 2 different IR cams.

Here’s the good news. On all the shots I took the rear of the oven and the sides were the same temperature as depicted in the photo below.

Note that the temps are the same on the back near the bottom and sides. Not only does it reach temps the heating distribution is very even. Wow! Color this Tech guy impressed.

Power Testing

Next the Air Fryer is described as being a 1500 watt device. Most homes have 20 Amp circuits. 120Volts @ 12.5 Amps = 1500 watts which makes this acceptable for the kitchen. Just don’t plug a toaster into the same outlet at the same time.

Doing a real world test with the temp set on its max of 450℉ I was reading a little more than 1000 watts. In fact the highest I saw was about 1040 watts. When the thermostat reaches the set temperature the wattage drops to around 500 – 600 watts until the thermostat tells the heating element to start glowing again.

I’ll show the actual full wattage results in a video in the next section.

Let’s Eat Something

Check out my first experience with the Plum Chef Air Fryer Oven. Someone told my wife that a certain brand of chicken breasts cooked in an Air Fryer were better than Chick-fil-A. So let’s see if they were right.

Spolier alert: They were!

In this video I also discuss the interior heating and power consumption.

On to the next! I lived in Japan for about 16 years and learned to love Gyoza (pork dumplings). While the frozen potstickers aren’t as good as fresh gyoza, it hits the spot. We usually fry them on the stove top which is full of oil and makes an enormous mess. No more.

We’ve already incorporated this into our cooking routine and best of all this is Wife approved. Not everything I get sent to review is wife approved.

Closing Thoughts

We’ve actually wanted an Air Fryer for a while but never could decide on which one to get. Or we never actually just sat down and pulled the trigger on one. We both love the Plum Chef Air Fryer oven and it is the perfect size for us. Plum Chef makes larger ones for that growing family. While I can’t speak to longevity since we’ve only had it a bit I can’t imagine that anything could go wrong with it unless we started handling it irresponsibly.

Also, It is easy to clean. Just make sure the drip pan is under the basket. Right after that you might have to wipe the inside of the door and that is about it.

If you’ve ever wanted an Air Fryer this hits all the wickets regarding attractiveness, efficiency, cost, and in an oven that heats quickly and evenly. I don’t believe you could go wrong buying one of these. Heck, buy two and give one to your kids.