The Vortex Pro is a versatile appliance that has always your back, no matter what you’re craving. Bake pizza, proof dough, and roast vegetables and beasts of all kinds. Dehydrate fruit for homemade fruit leather, or make your own jerky from your favorite game meats. With the Instant™ Vortex™ Air Fryer, you can create healthier versions of all your favorite fried foods. From fresh to frozen, the Instant™ Vortex™ crisps to perfection with little or no oil.
Our kitchen experts and panel of taste testers struggled to find anything to complain about with the Vortex Plus’ onion rings, doughnuts, and tater tots. The onion rings came out evenly cooked, with a solid and satisfying crisp. The doughnuts were delectable and fluffy on the inside, while taking on a crispy and flaky consistency on the outside. The rotisserie basket feels like an accessory that I haven’t quite grasped the usefulness of yet.
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. The Instant Vortex Plus was the best air fryer in our tests and features a window into the basket to monitor your food. At nearly $100 off, this is the lowest we’ve ever seen it priced. There aren’t presets built into the machine either, like a shortcut button for standard recipes like French fries.
Multiple modes aside, the Vortex Plus is marketed as an air fryer first and foremost. It comes with slotted baking sheets as well as an air fry basket that clips into the fryer’s interior chamber. You’ll also need to be careful when you remove the air fry basket or rotisserie accessories as they get very hot while cooking. That can be frustrating if you take out your food only to realize it needs to go back in for a few more minutes (because you couldn’t cook it at 425). Speaking of cleanup, all the attachments included (air fryer basket, trays, rotisserie spit parts) are dishwasher-safe. Points to Instant for making my after-dinner routine shorter in that regard.
It’s perfectly nonstick for cleanup, quiet while running, and, thanks to the compact footprint, it’s easy to store. Though the settings are simpler than some advanced models, it does the trick for every classic air fryer function. Beginners and advanced cooks alike will appreciate this Ninja air fryer, and it’s a smart pick for solo cooks and apartment dwellers. Air fryers have a few possible configurations, but the two classic types of air fryers are basket-style (including single and dual baskets) and toaster oven-style (often multifunctional with tray inserts). The capabilities of both can vary, and the best air fryer results are determined by convection power (how consistently the heat rotates through) and the capacity of the basket or tray.
I think this is a function of surface area – the Essentials could cook more quickly, as it was smaller, having ‘less’ air to heat and whip around the food. But don’t think that I’m doing it down – it was delicious, crisp, but tender on the inside, there was just a better example on the day. The air fryer comes with a QR-scannable guide that includes cooking times for various foods. Generally speaking, and as is the case with all air fryers, these serve as a guideline as you grow accustomed to the device.
It worked exactly as expected, reheating all the fries in a few minutes, tasting almost as good as when we first cooked them. I used the Instant Vortex Slim for two weeks, cooking various meals from breakfast through to dinner, as well as a few tasty treats, to test its limits and performance. I tried official Instant Pot recipes and cooking timelines, but also experimented using my own instincts to see how adaptable the Instant Pot is in use. All in all, I have very few complaints about the performance of the Instant Vortex Slim.
All of the food we tested in this machine was overcooked on the outside and undercooked inside, with varying levels of dehydration. If you include all parts of the basket, it could take around 10 minutes to get this thing clean. The basket is dishwasher safe, but the dishwasher will likely damage the nonstick coating. However, just like the moosoo air fryer Plus, we found that this model’s crisper plate falls out easily if the frying basket is tipped up too much.
The sides of the basket also seem to retain a little more oil than other options in our test suite. Get our best recipes, grocery finds, and clever kitchen tips delivered to your inbox. It is definitely worth running the machine, empty, as a test run before trying out a recipe. The model my UPS moosoo air fryer driver initially delivered had an issue with a fan that wasn’t working, but I returned it for another one, which worked just fine. Yes, I think you should buy it if you’re a big family without much kitchen space. It will turn out lots of food quickly without utterly dominating the space.