Goodbye Air Fryer: This New Kitchen Gadget Goes Beyond Frying With Nine Different Cooking Methods
The first time I heard it, I thought something had gone wrong. A low whisper of steam, a soft crackle, a quiet chime announcing itself from the counter. It was not the familiar blast of the air fryer, that confident workhorse of weeknight dinners. This was different. Calmer. More deliberate. Like the appliance itself was taking a breath before it started work.
On the counter sat a compact, smooth-fronted box with a clear lid and a panel that lit up at the touch of a finger. No giant basket, no bulky handle jutting into the room. Just a quiet presence that promised nine different ways to cook. Not just frying. Roasting, steaming, sautéing, slow cooking, baking, and more, all from one machine that looked suspiciously like the future arriving without making a fuss about it.
The Air Fryer Had Its Moment
We loved the air fryer for real reasons. It felt like cheating in the best possible way. Crispy potatoes without half a bottle of oil. Crunchy tofu that did not glue itself to the pan. Chicken wings that tasted like they came from somewhere that did not care about your health goals. Quick, loud, and very good at what it did.
But after a while, the limits became obvious. It fried. It roasted, sort of. It reheated leftovers reliably. But ask it to steam vegetables without drying them out, simmer a sauce, or hold a slow braise on a Sunday afternoon, and it simply was not built for that. One very good trick is still only one trick.
The new generation of kitchen technology has quietly taken note. Instead of promising better fries forever, this new machine offers something more grown up: genuine versatility. It does not shout air fryer on the box. It does not anchor its entire identity to one cooking method. It simply says, let me show you what else is possible.
Nine Ways to Actually Cook
Most of us buy a new appliance imagining one or two uses for it. If it is lucky, we discover a third before it gets quietly moved to the back of a cupboard. This machine is stubbornly refusing to let that happen. It arrives with nine cooking methods that feel less like a feature list and more like an invitation to cook differently.
The exact methods vary slightly by brand, but the common lineup looks roughly like this. Air frying for the familiar crunch without deep oil, covering fries, wings, tofu, and vegetable bites. Roasting for oven-level intensity in a much smaller space, covering vegetables, whole cuts of meat, and sheet-pan style dinners. Baking with gentle dry heat for muffins, small cakes, and flatbreads. Grilling and broiling with high top-down heat for fish, kebabs, and cheese melts. Steaming with moist, gentle heat for vegetables, dumplings, fish, and bao buns. Sautéing on a hot surface for onions, aromatics, and quick-cooking meats. Slow cooking at low patient heat for stews, braises, pulled meat, and beans. Reheating evenly without the sogginess that comes from a microwave. And dehydrating or warming at low heat for dried fruit, kale chips, and keeping food at the right temperature until you are ready to eat.
What makes this feel genuinely different in practice is the way those methods stack together within a single cooking session. You can sauté onions until they soften, add tomatoes and beans, switch to slow cook for a few hours, and then finish by broiling cheese over the top. All in the same vessel. No burned bottoms, no second pan, no oven to preheat.
What an Evening With This Machine Actually Looks Like
Imagine a cold, uninspiring evening. You come home tired, with a bag of reasonable intentions: some carrots, a block of halloumi, a handful of mushrooms, a bunch of kale you are determined not to waste.
You press sauté. The base warms in seconds. A little oil flows loosely across the surface and in go the onions, releasing that first wave of sweetness that turns a kitchen into somewhere you want to be. Garlic follows. Mushrooms give up their moisture with a soft hiss.
Without moving to a different pan or a different machine, you tap a button. A splash of broth, some chopped carrots and beans, a pinch of smoked paprika. The lid goes down and the machine becomes a slow cooker, the patient kind your grandmother swore by, but without the enormous bulk that used to claim its own dedicated counter corner. While it works, you go and change into something more comfortable.
An hour later the kitchen smells like you know exactly what you are doing. You arrange slices of halloumi on a small rack inside and a quick blast of top-down heat gives them golden grill marks and bubbling edges. A handful of kale goes in for a few minutes on air fry mode, turning from a limp obligation into crisp, emerald shards.
When you sit down to eat, it does not feel like a chore got finished. It feels like a proper meal got made, out of a bag of random ingredients, with one machine and a handful of button presses.
Less Clutter, More Capability
The air fryer always felt like a gadget born of urgency. Make it crispy. Make it fast. The nine-mode machine feels slower, even when it is not. It invites you to layer flavors, to notice the difference between dry heat and moist heat, to think about what a dish actually needs rather than just getting it done.
There is also a physical relief that comes with it. Instead of a lineup of single-purpose appliances taking up counter and cupboard space, the rice cooker, the slow cooker, the steamer, the toaster oven, you have one object that holds the capability of all of them. Fewer cords. Less clutter. Fewer instruction booklets shoved into drawers and never looked at again.
There is also a practical energy saving in using a smaller, well-insulated chamber rather than firing up a full oven for a tray of vegetables or a small loaf. The preheat time is minimal. On a warm evening it does not turn the kitchen into a second problem to manage.
It Changes How You Think About Meals
At some point the question stops being whether this machine is better than an air fryer. The more interesting shift is what happens to the way you plan and approach food when one tool can do this much.
Instead of thinking about what you can justify cooking, you start thinking in building blocks. Roasted vegetables tonight become tomorrow’s soup. Steamed dumplings become a crisped golden snack the following day with a short blast of air fry. Leftover roast chicken transforms into a slow-simmered broth while you work from home, the machine doing its quiet work in the background.
You cook more vegetables not because anyone told you to but because roasting a tray of them with miso and honey becomes genuinely low effort and low mess. You try more grains because you can sauté aromatics, toast the rice, and steam everything in the same pot. You bake on a weeknight because the machine absorbs most of the technical anxiety and you just have to show up with the ingredients.
Learning Its Personality
Every piece of cooking equipment has quirks and getting to know them is part of the pleasure. Maybe your machine runs a touch hot on bake, so you shave five degrees off the suggested temperature. Maybe you discover that reheating pizza on a lower setting followed by a short burst of high heat at the end gives you perfect gooey cheese and a properly crisp base.
Like a good pan or a well-seasoned cast iron, this machine has a character. The difference is it is far more forgiving than a temperamental gas flame or an inconsistent oven. The presets give you a starting point and over time you find yourself adjusting in small ways, a minute less here, a little more steam there, notes scribbled on scrap paper for next time.
So Is It Actually Goodbye to the Air Fryer?
Not dramatically. More like a quiet nod of gratitude and a gentle step aside.
The air fryer proved something important. It showed that compact, countertop cooking could be genuinely good and not just a novelty. It cracked a door open. The nine-mode multi-cooker is simply stepping through that door and looking around at everything else we still want to do in a kitchen.
In an era where most of us want fewer things doing more work, there is something genuinely appealing about a single calm machine that can handle Tuesday night leftovers and Saturday afternoon experiments with the same grace. Not just fried. Not just fast. But deeply, properly cooked across a whole range of textures and techniques.
One evening you might reach for the air fryer out of habit, fingers hovering over the familiar handle, before you turn to the quieter presence a little further along the counter. Not because the old tool was bad, but because your appetite for what cooking can be has grown a little larger than it used to be.
That small choice says something worth noticing. Goodbye to a single-purpose machine that served its time well, and hello to something that can fry, roast, bake, steam, stew, grill, simmer, reheat, and keep your dinner warm until you are ready for it.
Thanks for the crispy potatoes. We are cooking differently now.
FAQ
Is a nine-mode multi-cooker actually different from an air fryer? Yes. An air fryer focuses on high circulating dry heat and is designed primarily for crisping. A nine-mode multi-cooker includes that function but adds steaming, sautéing, slow cooking, baking, grilling, and more, making it capable of handling a much wider range of dishes and cooking styles.
Can it replace my oven entirely? For most everyday cooking, yes. It handles small-batch roasting, baking, and grilling very well. For large holiday meals or multiple trays at once, a full oven is still useful, but many people find themselves using their main oven significantly less once they have one of these.
Does food actually taste as good? Often better, or at least more consistent. Roasted vegetables caramelize well, air-fried food crisps without drying out, and slow-cooked dishes stay moist and developed in flavor. Pan searing still has its own character, but the multi-cooker comes impressively close for most everyday recipes.
Is it complicated to learn all nine modes? Not at all. Most machines have clear presets and labels. You can start by using it exactly like an air fryer and introduce the other functions gradually as your confidence grows. There is no requirement to master everything on day one.
Will it actually reduce clutter in my kitchen? If you use it consistently, yes. It can replace a separate air fryer, slow cooker, steamer, toaster oven, and in some cases a rice cooker. Most people who commit to one find themselves donating or storing away several single-purpose appliances they no longer reach for.
