During our first round of testing, we had some difficulty getting it up to the higher temperatures. At 300, 375, and 400 degrees, the Clear Cook remains within a few degrees of the set temperature; instant vortex however, when we set it to 350, it hovered closer to 340 degrees. The pattern on the tray requires you to wash out each section with the sponge methodically, while others need a quick swipe.
The Plus includes a rotisserie spit and two forks to secure each end of the food. It has a compact design, a stainless-steel front and an easy-to-navigate touchscreen panel up top. Release a latch inside the frame, and you can remove the door for cleaning. The Vortex also comes with a handy Y-shaped hook for inserting and removing both the rotisserie fork and the basket with ease.
You can also select the “rotate” function on any cooking mode and it will automatically split your cooking time in half, chime to remind you to rotate or flip your food, and then continue the cooking cycle. The max temperature on the Vortex is surprisingly just 400 degrees F. He’d be delighted to learn that the Vortex Plus has a capacity of 10 quarts — that’s large enough to hold a whole chicken or a full bag of frozen french fries. It can roast chicken thighs and a bunch of veggies at once, and so one of the most exciting promises of Instant Pot’s Air Fryer is its ability to feed the whole family with one cooking cycle. Here are the specific functions that this 7-in-1 air fryer boasts.
It comes with a window and light that allow you to keep an eye on food as it’s cooking, while built-in filters reduce the smells emitted during the cooking process. This air fryer is more expensive than the previous iteration and requires some experimentation, especially when cooking frozen foods; but it’s the best air fryer on the market right now. Knowing the volume of what you’ll want to cook in an air fryer is just as important as the type of food itself. If you’re slinging standard grocery store frozen fries, you can generally manage with 4 to 6 quarts, as long as you give them a good shake halfway through cooking.
We’ve been using sweet potato fries as a bit of a torture test for our air fryers because we’ve yet to find a model that can get sweet potato fries truly crispy. The Vortex Plus didn’t fully scale this mountain, but it made the fries crispier than any other model we’ve tested. Crispy enough, in fact, that we’d call them a reasonable replacement for deep-fried instant vortex sweet potato fries. You forget to use tongs when removing foodWe get that this is a minor gripe, but this is one of the few air fryers we’ve found where the crisper plate falls out if the basket is tipped up. It’s annoying, and makes this air fryer unsuitable for those who prefer to tip the basket, rather than use tongs, to remove food after cooking.