My previous air fryer was a bit of a strange roundish shape, and I find the nice square shape nicer aesthetically, and less awkward to carry, move, and put things beside. Sharon Franke is a journalist who instant pot duo nova specializes in testing and writing about kitchen equipment. A thirty-year veteran of the Good Housekeeping Institute, Sharon also worked as a professional chef in New York City restaurants for seven years.
However, the air fryer struggled to cook the broccoli evenly, performing in the middle of the pack during testing. It could have been more even, but my family still gobbled the batch up. It’s 20% smaller than some of Instant Pot’s other models, but doesn’t sacrifice capacity, offering 6 quarts / 5.7 liters. Given that many older air fryers of this size offer a reduced capacity of 2 quarts / 2 liters, this is a huge win for the Instant Vortex Slim. On the front of the air fryer is a handle that’s used to pull out the basket, which requires minimal fuss or force. Inside is a lift-out tray whose metal handle tucks in flush to the tray, meaning you don’t lose precious space in the center of the fryer as we’ve seen with some other models.
It’s half the price and was runner-up in our air fryer testing. It doesn’t have a window in the basket, an air filter, or dehydration function, but it’s an excellent value and performs basic air frying with ease. The Plus features a replaceable air filter designed to remove odors. To test this, I ran the air fryer until it burned bacon-topped deviled eggs placed in a silicone liner. The filter didn’t completely remove the odors, but I could smell it much less than when I cook items in other air fryers. In 8 minutes, the Instant Vortex Plus produced tender broccoli with lightly browned florets that tasted great.
We did find it browned frozen French fries and chicken nuggets well, but the limited capacity of the inner pot made it difficult to air fry large batches of food. The Instant Vortex has four pre-programmed settings to air fry, bake, roast and reheat similar to the Instant Pot’s seven settings. The caveat here is the Vortex only has eight buttons, four of which are those programs, plus Start, Cancel, Time and Temp.
And the basket liner rarely came loose when we inverted it, another improvement over the winner. Just like the earlier generations of air fryers I don’t think these are great products for large families (5+). While the basket and crisper plate are dishwasher-safe, I preferred to wash the basket by hand.
There are no preset cooking programs on this air fryer; instead you need to set the temperature and time manually as well as the overall setting, such as air fry, roast or reheat. There’s also little guidance in terms of cooking charts supplied — you will need to go online to find these. Like most air fryers, it excels at delivering crispy food in a fraction of the time. Small but thoughtful design features dramatically simplify the cooking process. This air fryer is perfect for cooking any fried foods that would otherwise go in the deep fryer.
First, I put the Instant Vortex Slim to the test with a portion of steak fries and salmon. The recipe book suggested 390ºF / 200ºC for minutes for the fries and 350ºF / 176ºC for 8-12 minutes for the salmon. Since I was cooking the fish from frozen, I popped it in the tray once there were 8 minutes left on the timer for the fries. And less noise doesn’t come at the expense of high-quality results – the Instant Vortex Slim upkeeps its siblings’ fantastic legacy of perfectly air-fried meals. Its temperature settings range from 95ºF / 35ºC to 400ºF / 205ºC, and the timer can go up to 60 minutes. We will keep this review updated with information on how long this takes.
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