The first time I slid the drawer of my old air fryer back into place and pressed “start,” I felt like I’d witnessed a minor miracle. Crispy potatoes without a vat of oil! Crunchy cauliflower that didn’t turn to mush! But a few years, a few dozen countertop gadgets, and a thousand recipe hacks later, that once-futuristic whirring box now felt oddly… basic. It fried with hot air, sure, but what about slow braises, smoky roasts, gentle stews, or crackling sourdough? My kitchen felt like a graveyard of single-purpose appliances—each promising to “change my life,” each ending up eating cabinet space.
So when a friend told me about a new kind of all-in-one cooker that doesn’t just fry, but simmers, steams, bakes, ferments, grills, and more—nine methods in one humming, compact machine—I was skeptical. Another promise. Another plug. Another cord. Still, the idea lodged itself into my brain. Could one gadget really make the air fryer obsolete? I decided to find out, the way every good kitchen experiment begins: with curiosity, a messy counter, and something that sizzles.
Meet the Gadget That Wants to Replace Your Air Fryer
The first thing you notice isn’t the buttons, or the digital display, or even the sleek, brushed-steel body. It’s the quiet. Unlike the loud jet-engine whoosh of many air fryers, this new multi-method cooker purrs. A low, confident hum, like it knows you’re about to throw ridiculous expectations at it.
It sits on the counter like a compact oven crossed with a small spaceship—front panel of settings and modes, a generously sized interior, and interchangeable racks, trays, and a deep, heavy pot that feels like it means business. You can smell the faint metallic tang you get from brand-new appliances, waiting for their first real test. The promise is bold: nine cooking methods in one place, without needing separate pans for everything, without preheating a full oven, and without drying out your food the way first-generation air fryers sometimes did.
Think of it as a shape-shifter. Some days it’s a roaster. Some days it’s a gentle steamer. Other days it’s your no-fuss slow cooker burbling away in the background. The core idea is simple but powerful: instead of forcing you to buy an air fryer, a dehydrator, a rice cooker, a grill pan, a toaster oven, and a slow cooker, this one machine does all of that—and more—with programmable heat, air flow, and moisture control. The air fryer, it turns out, was just the prologue.
9 Ways This Thing Cooks (So You Don’t Need 9 Appliances)
When you scroll through the modes, it’s a little like browsing a restaurant menu combined with a science lab interface. Here’s what those nine cooking methods actually look like in everyday, dinner-on-a-Tuesday life:
1. Air Frying… but Smarter
Let’s start with the familiar. Yes, it air fries—only with better control. Instead of just blasting food with searing hot air until it’s either crispy or overcooked, this gadget lets you fine-tune temperature and fan speed. So your sweet potato wedges can be shatter-crisp on the edges, tender inside, instead of half-burnt and half-soggy.
The first time I tried it, I tossed some chickpeas with smoked paprika, olive oil, and salt. Ten minutes later, I had golden, glassy-crisp spheres that snapped between my teeth. Not the slightly chewy texture I used to accept from my old air fryer—this was closer to what you’d get from a slow oven roast, done in a fraction of the time.
2. Roasting That Smells Like Sunday Afternoon
Turn on the roast mode and the whole kitchen changes. The air grows warm and fragrant, the way it does when you roast root vegetables in a traditional oven. You can hear the occasional quiet pop from a cherry tomato collapsing in a pool of its own juice. The machine uses a focused top-and-side heat that mimics an oven’s dry, enveloping warmth—but with a smaller space to heat, it’s faster and more efficient.
A tray of carrots, parsnips, and onions, tossed with rosemary and a slick of olive oil, came out with blistered edges and sugary, caramelized cores. Usually, I’d need to crank my big oven and wait ages for it to preheat. Here, I was already sitting at the table, fork in hand, by the time my oven would have just beeped to say “ready.”
3. Steaming That Keeps the Color, Texture, and Soul
Steaming tends to be an afterthought: something we associate with diet food or sad broccoli. But the steaming mode on this device is something else entirely. It fills its internal chamber with a soft, controlled cloud of moisture. No rattling lids, no forgotten pots boiling dry.
Drop in a fillet of salmon on a perforated tray with lemon slices and dill, set the timer, and walk away. When you return, the fish flakes at the nudge of a fork, still blushing in the middle, tasting like the sea instead of the fridge. The colors stay vivid—the green of asparagus, the orange of carrots—because they’re not being drowned in aggressively boiling water.
4. Slow Cooking Without the Monolithic Crock
Slow cookers are legendary for weeknight sanity, but they’re also big, heavy, and single-minded. This new gadget has a low-and-slow mode that turns the deep pot insert into a simmering cauldron for stews, curries, and braises.
On a chilly evening, I filled it with chunks of beef, onions, garlic, red wine, and herbs. Eight hours later, the kitchen smelled like a countryside inn. The meat had slumped into tenderness, the sauce glossy and thickened. Unlike my old slow cooker, which sometimes gave me watery, flat-tasting results, this one kept a steady, slightly higher controlled heat and let me click on a final 15-minute “reduce” function that gently evaporated excess liquid without burning the bottom.
5. Baking in a Miniature, Well-Behaved Oven
This is the mode that truly made me look at my air fryer and think, “Your days are numbered.” Baking in a typical air fryer is possible, but unpredictable—uneven browning, odd textures. Here, baking is deliberate. The machine moderates airflow so your muffins don’t dry out, your cookies don’t blow sideways, and your cakes rise evenly.
I tested it with a small pan of sourdough rolls. As they baked, a gentle crust formed, lightly blistered, while the centers stayed open and chewy. There was no need to run the huge oven just for a handful of rolls. For a solo cook or a small family, this mode feels like reclaiming the idea of “just baking a little something” without committing to heating the whole kitchen.
More Than Hot Air: Grill, Sear, Steam-Crisp, and Dehydrate
Beyond the five core modes most people expect, this gadget quietly stretches into territory that usually belongs to specialty machines—the kind that end up buried in a closet after a couple of enthusiastic uses. Only here, they’re just… buttons you can press any time.
6. Grilling and Searing Without the Smoke Alarm Drama
The grill mode harnesses a powerful top element and a ridged tray to mimic the high, direct heat of a grill pan—without filling your home with smoke. Place marinated vegetables and a few thin steaks on the tray and close the lid. In minutes, you’ll see those dark, defined grill marks and smell that caramelized, Maillard magic rising through the vent.
The outside of a chicken thigh crackles under your fork; the inside runs with juices. And because the heat is enclosed and directed, you’re not dodging oil splatters or fanning the smoke detector with a kitchen towel.
7. Steam-Crisping: The Best of Tender and Crunchy
Steam-crisping might be its most underrated trick. The gadget starts with steam—locking in moisture—then gradually switches to a high-velocity, dry heat blast that crisps the surface. Think dumplings that are tender and juicy inside, with lacy, crisp bottoms. Or buns that stay pillowy but gain a delicate outer shell that crackles when you tear them.
This hybrid method also works wonders on leftover pizza. Instead of the cardboard chewiness of a microwave or the tooth-breaking crust from a traditional oven reheat, steam-crisping gives you molten cheese, revived toppings, and a crust that’s flexible but crisp-edged—shockingly close to day-one pizza.
8. Dehydrating: Turning Fruit into Chewy Little Jewels
The dehydrating mode feels like slow kitchen magic. Slice apples into thin disks, lay them on the racks, and let the machine breathe gentle warmth over them for hours. As time passes, the slices shrink, curl at the edges, and darken slightly. They emerge leathery but tender, tasting more intensely of apple than raw apples ever do.
This works with herbs, tomatoes, even leftover cooked vegetables you want to turn into crunchy snacks. Instead of buying plastic-packed dried fruit or herbs, you can make your own little jars of concentrated flavor, each slice or leaf carrying the memory of its fresh form.
9. Yogurt and Ferments: Quiet Alchemy on Your Counter
Not every version of this gadget will include a dedicated fermentation or yogurt mode, but many modern multi-cookers do—and it’s worth seeking out. With a steady low, warm temperature, milk inoculated with culture transforms, slowly, into tangy yogurt. Cabbage salted and packed into a jar develops bubbles and sourness over days.
It’s strangely intimate, this process. Your kitchen becomes a small ecosystem, alive with invisible work. Instead of buying tubs of yogurt with long ingredient lists, you can make your own with just milk and starter. Each batch is a quiet reminder that cooking isn’t only about speed and convenience; it’s also about patience and transformation.
How It Compares: Air Fryer vs. Multi-Method Cooker
At some point, in the middle of all this testing, I realized my old air fryer had gone untouched for weeks. It sat off to the side, squat and slightly embarrassed, like a retired actor watching a rising star steal all the lines. It still worked, of course. It could still crisp fries. But in the face of a machine that could not only crisp but also braise, steam, ferment, grill, and bake, it had become a bit… one-note.
To put things in perspective, imagine lining up all the gear this one gadget can replace:
| Old Gadget | Replaced By | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|
| Air fryer | Air fry & steam-crisp modes | Crispy fries, wings, veggie snacks |
| Toaster oven | Bake & roast modes | Small bakes, reheating, toast |
| Slow cooker | Slow cook mode | Stews, braises, soups |
| Steamer basket/pot | Steam mode | Fish, veggies, dumplings |
| Grill pan | Grill/sear mode | Steaks, skewers, grilled veggies |
| Dehydrator | Dehydrate mode | Dried fruit, herbs, veggie chips |
| Yogurt maker | Yogurt/ferment mode * | Homemade yogurt, simple ferments |
*Availability depends on the specific model.
Suddenly, my cabinets looked less like a jumble and more like an opportunity. If one machine could do all this reliably, did I really need that aging air fryer? The question wasn’t just about novelty. It was about space, energy, and the simple joy of having fewer things that each do more.
The Feel of Cooking Changes When One Gadget Does It All
There’s another quietly radical shift that happens when you bring a multi-method cooker like this into your kitchen: cooking starts to feel more fluid. Instead of planning around which gadget can do what, you plan around what you actually want to eat—and then match a mode to that desire.
On a sticky summer evening, you might steam-crisp corn on the cob without heating up the whole house. On a rainy Sunday, you might slow-cook a bean stew all day, then switch to bake mode for a quick pan of cornbread to go alongside—without even moving to a different appliance.
It also changes your relationship with time. Because the preheating and cooking are often faster than traditional ovens, weeknight dinners feel less like rushed chores and more like small rituals you can actually savor. Hearing the soft fan, smelling roasted garlic building in the air, lifting the lid to a plume of aromatic steam—it’s all more sensory, more immediate, and somehow, more human.
Goodbye, Air Fryer: What Stays, What Goes
Parting with a gadget can feel weirdly emotional. These are the things that helped you master roasted Brussels sprouts, or hosted that first experimental tofu dinner, or kept you fed when life was chaotic. My air fryer had seen me through busy jobs, new apartments, and nights when the only thing between me and total exhaustion was a tray of fast, crispy potatoes.
But kitchens, like any living space, are ecosystems. They evolve. Tools arrive, do their job, and sometimes make way for something that can do more, with less waste and less clutter. When a single machine can fry, roast, steam, bake, slow-cook, grill, dehydrate, and even gently coax milk into yogurt, it’s hard to justify keeping a one-trick pony—no matter how beloved it once was.
So yes, this new generation of multi-method cookers doesn’t just match what the air fryer can do—it goes far beyond it. It invites you to cook more spontaneously, to experiment more fearlessly, and to reclaim precious counter space while you’re at it.
In the end, saying goodbye to the air fryer isn’t really about abandoning crispy snacks. It’s about opening the door to a kitchen that’s more flexible, more creative, and more attuned to the way we actually live and eat now. And somewhere, there’s a tray of steam-crisped dumplings and a pot of slow-simmered stew waiting to prove it to you, one quiet, fragrant evening at a time.
FAQ
Is this multi-method cooker harder to use than a regular air fryer?
It looks more complex at first, but most models are designed with preset modes and clear buttons. Once you learn which mode fits which food, it actually simplifies decision-making, because you don’t have to juggle multiple gadgets.
Can it really replace my oven?
For small to medium batches, yes, it can handle a lot of what you’d normally do in an oven—roasting, baking, reheating. For large holiday meals or big baking projects, a full-size oven still has the edge in capacity.
Does food still get as crispy as in an air fryer?
Yes, and often better. With more control over fan speed, temperature, and steam, you can get crisp exteriors without drying out the inside. The steam-crisp mode in particular delivers excellent texture.
Is it energy efficient?
Generally, yes. Because it heats a smaller space than a full oven and works faster, it often uses less energy, especially for everyday meals and small batches.
What should I look for when buying one?
Check the capacity, number of modes (especially if you want yogurt or dehydrate), ease of cleaning, noise level, and whether the accessories (racks, trays, pot) feel sturdy. A clear, intuitive control panel is also important.