The first thing you notice is the sound. Not the harsh whir of an air fryer fan or the metallic thud of a baking tray, but a soft hum, like distant rain on a roof. On the counter, a compact silver-and-black appliance glows quietly, its screen lit with gentle icons: roast, bake, steam, slow cook, sauté, grill, proof, dehydrate, reheat. In one box, nine different ways to turn raw ingredients into dinner – or breakfast, or the sort of midnight snack that makes you close your eyes at the first bite.
If the air fryer was the loud, brash newcomer of the last decade – all crunch, all speed, all promise-of-healthier-fries – this new generation of multi-method cookers feels like its calmer, more thoughtful cousin. It doesn’t just fry with hot air. It simmers. It gently steams. It slow dances with tough cuts of meat until they surrender into tenderness. It dries tomatoes into chewy jewels and proves bread dough like a warm, patient grandmother. All from the same spot on your countertop.
From Single-Trick Gadget to Quiet Kitchen Companion
Think back to when the air fryer first arrived. Maybe yours came in a bulky box just before the holidays, all plastic inserts and recipe leaflets. There was that first glorious batch of fries, or crisped-up frozen nuggets, or a reheated slice of pizza that tasted suspiciously close to fresh. It felt like magic – and for a while, it was.
But sooner or later, the novelty wore off. The basket felt small. The fan felt loud. You discovered it did some things brilliantly and others… not so much. Steam? Not really. Soups? Definitely not. Bread baking? Only if you liked it oddly dry. And one day you caught yourself pushing it aside to make room for a cutting board and thought, Huh. Maybe you’re just another gadget after all.
This new style of multi-method cooker – let’s just call it the “nine-in-one” for now – feels like the next chapter. It isn’t here to shout about “guilt-free fries.” It’s here to quietly become the most useful thing you own.
Imagine searing onions in the same pot you’ll later slow cook in. Or steaming asparagus right after roasting chicken, without washing a stack of pans. Imagine proofing cinnamon rolls, baking them, then using a gentle reheat setting later so they smell like they just came out of the oven again. It’s not showy. It’s just deeply, almost suspiciously, convenient.
The Moment It Clicks: Nine Ways to Cook, One Home Base
The first time you really understand what a nine-method cooker can do is rarely during a careful, pre-planned dinner. It’s often on some random Wednesday when life has gone sideways.
You stumble through the door late, shoulders tight, your stomach doing that hollow, impatient ache. Takeout menus call your name. But instead, you open the fridge and the contents stare back without enthusiasm: half a head of broccoli, a pack of chicken thighs, yesterday’s rice, a lemon on its last bright day.
You tap the multi-cooker awake. There’s a brief moment of decision – then instinct takes over. You toss the chicken with oil, garlic, a bit of paprika. Onto the tray it goes under the grill setting: high heat, quick sear, the skin blistering and darkening in places like a backyard barbecue but confined to a metal box. The smell – rich, smoky, primal – curls through the kitchen.
While the chicken crackles, you switch another layer to steam. The broccoli goes in with a scant splash of water. Steam rises, coating the florets in a gentle heat that keeps them bright green rather than limp and defeated. The rice? Straight into a shallow dish with a drizzle of stock, then under the “reheat” function that behaves more like a low oven than a microwave. Ten minutes later, it tastes oddly new again, the grains separate, fluffy, and warm.
Three methods, one device, no pan-scrubbing chaos exploding across the sink. You plate up in your oldest bowl – because old bowls always make food taste like “home” – and find yourself thinking, Oh. This is different. This feels like the kitchen has been quietly rearranged around me.
The 9 Cooking Methods in One Countertop Device
Of course, “different” is only impressive if it’s actually useful. Here’s what makes this nine-in-one approach more than just a marketing phrase:
| Cooking Method | What It Feels Like In Real Life |
|---|---|
| Air Fry / Convection Roast | Crispy fries, roasted veggies, golden chicken – like an oven on turbo mode. |
| Bake | Cookies, small loaves, lasagna – without preheating a giant oven. |
| Steam | Tender fish, bright vegetables, dumplings that taste like dim sum dreams. |
| Slow Cook | Stews, braises, and beans that bubble away all day while you forget about them. |
| Sauté / Sear | Soft onions, browned meat, quick sauces – all in the same pot you’ll finish in. |
| Grill / Broil | Charred peppers, blistered tomatoes, smoky-skinned chicken. |
| Proof | Dough rising in a warm, stable environment – bread therapy on demand. |
| Dehydrate | Homemade fruit chips, dried herbs, chewy tomatoes. |
| Reheat | Leftovers that taste like they’ve been cooked today, not yesterday. |
Each method is less about a button and more about a way of treating ingredients. High, dry heat for browning. Low, humid heat for tenderness. Long, slow cooking for breaking down collagen. Gentle warming for coaxing yeast awake. It’s as if someone took all the main verbs of cooking and folded them into one quiet box.
Cooking with All Your Senses Again
There’s a secret side effect to upgrading from a single-function air fryer to a multi-method cooker: you start paying attention again.
With an air fryer, the ritual is straightforward: toss, set timer, walk away, shake basket, hope for the best. It works, but it can feel oddly disconnected, as if you’ve outsourced dinner to a tiny hot wind tunnel.
With a nine-method device, the process becomes more of a conversation between you and the food.
You tap sauté and drizzle oil into the warm metal, listening for that first whisper of heat. Onions hit the surface with a soft sigh, releasing their sharpness into the air. They go from harsh white to translucent, then to that magical pale gold under your wooden spoon. You toss in garlic last, just until it releases its perfume – you’ve learned the seconds between fragrant and burned by heart now.
Then, without moving a pot, you press slow cook. The same vessel that held the sizzling vegetables now cradles stock, spices, and hunks of meat. The lid settles with a soft click. Hours later, as evening leans against the windows, you lift it to find everything transformed: meat sliding from bone, a glossy surface of fat you can skim away in one simple movement.
Or consider the sensory difference of steaming versus frying.
Broccoli in an air fryer often walks a thin line between delightfully charred and oddly dry. In the steam setting, it turns vivid green, the stalks just tender enough to yield under your teeth while still holding their shape. Carrots glisten, their sweetness tuned up by moisture rather than charring. Fish emerges soft and delicate, absorbing aromatics – ginger, scallions, citrus – in a quiet, gentle way that feels almost like poaching in scented air.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about feeling connected again: the clink of the pot, the hiss of steam, the scent of caramelization rather than simple “crispness.” You aren’t just reheating or crisping. You’re cooking, in the truest, sensory-rich sense.
One Gadget Instead of Nine: A Tiny Revolution in Space
There’s an almost emotional lift in looking at a cleared counter. No teetering stacks of mismatched appliances, each with its own awkward plug and specialty use. Just one, maybe two things you actually reach for daily.
The nine-method cooker quietly asks: What if you didn’t need a separate steamer, slow cooker, dehydrator, and proofing box? What if you could stop playing Tetris with your cupboards?
Maybe your kitchen is small, the kind where two people cooking at once is an elaborate dance of apologies and sidesteps. Or maybe you simply crave visual calm. This is where the real-world, non-technical magic happens: less clutter, more intention.
That old slow cooker you used twice last winter? It can go. The dehydrator that sounded like a plane taking off? You can finally pass it on. The bread proofing hacks – balancing bowls over radiators, juggling damp towels and plastic wrap – become unnecessary when your dough has a warm, stable nook to rise in.
Even your big oven starts to feel less essential on weeknights. Why heat an entire metal cavern when a compact chamber can roast vegetables faster, bake a tray of cookies for two, or reheat pizza with a crisp bottom and molten cheese?
The result is not only physical space, but mental space. Fewer decisions. Fewer cords. Fewer manuals. More meals that feel doable at the end of a long day, simply because the distance between raw ingredients and finished plate has been gently shortened.
Goodbye, Air Fryer: Why This Feels Like an Upgrade, Not a Betrayal
Parting with a once-beloved gadget can feel oddly personal. The air fryer helped you through rushed mornings and lazy evenings. It crisped, it reheated, it pretended to deep fry without the vat of oil. It did its job.
But at some point, you might find yourself side-eyeing it as another, more capable machine quietly handles dinner, dessert, and tomorrow’s lunch prep. The air fryer becomes like that friend you adored in your twenties – always fun, always up for a night out – but who doesn’t quite fit your life now that you seek slower, more layered experiences.
What makes this transition feel like an evolution rather than a betrayal is versatility. A nine-method cooker doesn’t say, “Forget crunch.” It says, “Let’s have crunch and tenderness, and juiciness, and patience when we need it.”
You can still make those shatteringly crisp potato wedges. But you can also:
- Slow cook a pot of beans on a rainy Sunday, then crisp them under the grill setting for tacos.
- Steam a whole fish with ginger and soy for a quiet Tuesday night.
- Proof a boule of sourdough, then bake it until the crust crackles and the interior sighs into an open crumb.
- Dehydrate orange slices to float in winter drinks or tuck into jars as edible decorations.
The air fryer era was about speed and simplicity. This next era adds depth, variety, and a kind of gentle generosity to the way you feed yourself and the people you love.
Everyday Rituals: How It Changes the Way You Eat
The real power of a nine-in-one gadget doesn’t necessarily come from big, impressive meals. It emerges in the small, almost invisible rituals of daily life.
Morning might start with a reheated slice of frittata, warmed slowly so the eggs stay tender instead of rubbery. While you sip coffee, a low proof setting wakes up dough for tonight’s flatbreads, transforming a bowl of flour and water into something that will blister and puff later under high heat.
At midday, you toss mixed vegetables with salt and oil and let them roast while you answer emails. The gentle fan wraps everything in hot air, turning cubed squash caramel-brown at the edges, giving red onions those irresistible charred tips.
By evening, you’re tired, but there’s a quiet backup plan: a container of cooked beans from earlier in the week, made silky by hours on slow cook. You sauté garlic and chili in the same pot, add the beans back with a splash of stock, and let the device nudge everything into a thick, fragrant stew. It’s not restaurant food. It’s deeply human, deeply “home.”
On weekends, you wander into the kitchen with no real plan, just a cluster of ingredients and mood. Maybe you steam buns you picked up in a little shop across town, the soft dough turning cloudlike under gentle heat. Maybe you experiment with dehydrating thin plums into tart-chewy disks. Maybe you roast a whole chicken on convection, the skin lacquered and bubbling, while root vegetables soak up the drippings below.
Piece by piece, the gadget stops being “new” and starts being normal – the kind of normal that quietly lifts your cooking from “What’s quickest?” to “What would feel good right now?”
FAQs
Is this just an air fryer with extra buttons?
No. While it can air fry or convection roast, a true nine-method cooker adds functions like steaming, slow cooking, sautéing, proofing, and dehydrating. Those require different temperature ranges, moisture control, and often different heating elements than a typical air fryer.
Will food still get as crispy as in a regular air fryer?
Yes, in most cases. The high-speed fan and focused heat still deliver crisp textures on fries, wings, and roasted vegetables. The difference is that you can also use gentler methods when crispness isn’t the goal, like steaming fish or proofing dough.
Can this replace my slow cooker and steamer?
For many people, yes. The slow cook function can handle stews, soups, and braises, while the steam mode works well for vegetables, dumplings, and delicate proteins. That consolidation is part of what frees up so much counter and cabinet space.
Is it complicated to use all nine functions?
The learning curve is usually small. Most devices use simple icons and presets for common methods. You can start with just one or two functions – like air fry and reheat – and gradually experiment with steaming, slow cooking, or dehydrating as you get comfortable.
Does it really save time compared to an oven?
Often, yes. Because the cooking chamber is smaller and well-insulated, it heats up faster than a traditional oven. Convection-style settings can roast and bake more quickly, and you avoid preheating a large space for small meals.
What kind of foods are best for the dehydrate function?
Thinly sliced fruits (apples, oranges, strawberries), herbs, cherry tomatoes, and even homemade snacks like kale chips or zucchini chips work beautifully. Low, consistent heat and air circulation slowly remove moisture while preserving flavor.
Is it worth upgrading if I mostly cook for one or two people?
It can be especially useful for smaller households. You avoid heating a full-size oven for a single tray, you can batch-cook beans or stews in manageable quantities, and you gain flexible ways to reheat leftovers so they taste freshly made rather than tired.