Instant Vortex® 6-quart Air Fryer

The marinade infuses the chicken thighs with a perfect balance of flavors, resulting in a juicy and aromatic main course. This juicy Orange Chicken recipe is one of my famous air fryer recipes – at home. Using simple instant pot duo nova ingredients, this recipe is a family favorite. This air fryer eggplant recipe is one of the best eggplant recipes I have ever made. This is a completely plant-based meal for all my vegan/vegetarian friends.

Millie Fender is Head of Reviews on the Homes and Gardens Ecommerce team. She specializes in cooking appliances, such as the best kettles, and also reviews outdoor grills and pizza ovens. Millie loves to bake, so she will take any excuse to review stand mixers and other baking essentials. When she’s not putting products through their paces in our dedicated testing kitchen, Millie’s reviews are conducted at home, meaning she uses these products in her own day-to-day life.

instant vortex

One of the main reasons I like air fryers is they do a great job of reheating leftovers, even better than a microwave. The Plus has a reheat mode that cooks food at 280 degrees for 10 minutes. I’d put in a slice or two of leftover pizza, and well before the 10 minutes were up, the pizza was ready and just as tasty as when I purchased it. Once started, the air fryer enters preheat mode for 3 to 4 minutes, at which point it beeps at you to add food. I found preheating unnecessary — I put the food in and started cooking right away, subtracting 3 minutes from my cooking time since the timer doesn’t count down until after the unit preheats.

The Vortex Plus XL is very easy to wipe down as there are no large gaps that hold onto stubborn crumbs. There are, however, two baskets, which double your clean-up. The Instant Vortex Slim still has a few bells and whistles that might not be necessary for all users – the touchscreen, customizable settings and dishwasher-safe components, for example. These all inflate the price, so you might be better off buying a more basic model. The rest of the Instant Vortex lineup is great, but you just might not care about fancy features such as OdorErase, ClearCook or the progress bar. There’s still more than enough in here to make the appliance feel high-tech and well considered.

It’s a user-friendly app that allows you to search for recipes or browse according to whatever Instant appliance you have in your home. Once you “Start Cooking,” it guides you through the cooking process step-by-step with no room for confusion. You can also “heart” or share a recipe to save it for later use. It’s easy to get intimidated by appliances that have touch screens instead of traditional buttons; they often make navigation more complicated.

Its easy-to-use interface makes it great for recent air-fryer converts or parents who enjoy cooking with their pint-sized sous chefs. Consumer Reports has full test results for the moosoo air fryer and dozens of other air fryers. The Instant Vortex sounds like three microwaves running all at once, as opposed to the more subtle fridgelike hum of other air fryers we’ve tried. The vortex comes with a removable drip pan on the bottom that is easy to clean. You typically can’t layer foods and compared to the size of the whole unit, the available cooking surface can be quite small (depending on your model and size).

Air fryers are a convenient alternative to shallow or deep frying, but big appliances like this can be difficult to clean, counteracting that convenience. Chicken breasts come in various sizes and thicknesses, and poultry must be cooked evenly. Each breast is cooked thoroughly without sacrificing moisture or overly crisping the thinner edges. Donuts and onion rings have a nice crisp to the outside but remain undercooked on the inside; the donuts also require extra time in the fryer.

The Instant™ Vortex® Plus is sleek, versatile, and convenient, with rotisserie and One-Step EvenCrisp™ air flow for a perfect golden finish and crispy, tender results every time. Make all your favorite finger foods with less oil and no mess and get food on the table faster. Please visit /support/register to register your new Instant Brands™ appliance. Failure to register your product will not diminish your warranty rights. The registration will enable us to keep you up to date with product developments, recipes and contact you in the unlikely event of a product safety notification.

From there, we could determine whether we wanted to take the food out early, add more time to the recipe, or just stare longingly at it until the timer beeped. A step up from the Instant Vortex Slim, this air fryer comes packed out with all of the best features from Instant Pot’s air fry engineers, including a ClearCook window and OdorErase. Plus, when you’re done cooking your delicious meals, both the basket and tray are dishwasher safe, so cleanup takes minimal effort. Instant Pot is known for making some of the best air fryers, and the slim version of its Vortex product line completes the range.