I gave it a go with a popular online recipe, 2 pounds of thinly sliced top round beef and a tasty marinade. Set at 155 for 3 hours, I filled two trays with the marinated meat. Once the 3 hours were up, I set the Vortex Plus to bake at 275 and cooked the jerky for 10 minutes to ensure food safety. This combination air fryer dreams big and gets a lot of things right, but it’s not without its flaws, and my testing experience left me hoping Instant will make improvements and rerelease it.
Ninja 4qt is still an excellent air fryer… we just prefer Vortex® head-to-head. Combination recipes in the air fryer are great because you can create instant vortex dinner dishes quickly and efficiently with very little overall prep. Cooking fresh chicken breast in the air fryer turned out really, really well.
Much like the rest of the Instant Vortex lineup, this slim model is stylish and available in all-black. There is an included instruction manual which is very thorough, and you can take a look online to find recipe suggestions from Instant Brands. One of the USPs of the slightly higher priced Instant Vortex Plus with ClearCook and OdourErase (view at John Lewis) is that it has the ability to prevent food smells.
From a price point, it’s not that much more than the 6-quart Vortex®. We have an Instant™ Vortex® 4-in-1, 6-quart Air Fryer purchased in instant pot duo nova 2020. Since then, there have been updated version of this same air fryer as well as Vortex® models with larger and smaller capacities.
The interior and exterior of the air fryer can be wiped clean with a damp cloth, but should never be submerged in water since it contains electrical components. The Instant Vortex Plus is a solid air fryer choice, as long as you’re willing to do some recipe research. It’s going to take a lot of trial and error to learn how to cook in this air fryer.
Monica is Reviewed’s senior Kitchen & Cooking staff writer and an avid home cook; she’s been testing a wide range of kitchen products at Reviewed for over a year. Previously the Digital Editor at Culture Cheese Magazine (and a former barista), she’s also had her work published in The Boston Globe, Modern Luxury, Boston Magazine, and more. It’s a user-friendly app that allows you to search for recipes or browse moosoo air fryer according to whatever Instant appliance you have in your home. Once you “Start Cooking,” it guides you through the cooking process step-by-step with no room for confusion. You can also “heart” or share a recipe to save it for later use. Brussels sprouts came out nicely browned with crispy edges, frozen fries had a decadent crunch and melty interior, and bacon was browned and crunchy without getting burnt.
Its easy-to-use interface makes it easy to roast potatoes and air fry chicken at the same time (and have them ready at the same time, thanks to the SyncFinish feature). But overall, this machine worked effortlessly at roasting, crisping, and heating food. My favorite feature of the Instant Vortex Plus is the window in the basket.
They’ve since sent us a replacement quickly (not an air fryer) without much hassle. We’ll write a more detailed comparison guide including pros and cons about these two air fryers which you can read soon. Because we have cooked so many different things in this air fryer, we thought it might be helpful to see how it performed on different types of foods. Yes, out of the box the Vortex® 6qt air fryer beeps when you touch any button, when preheating is done, when it’s time to turn the food, etc. Additionally, this air fryer pauses automatically when you open the basket. It will resume air frying once the basket is properly inserted again.
Its hot air vents were at the back rather than the top, which meant we needed to bring it forward on the countertop, too. It’s good, but many food items (especially frozen foods) haven’t yet been tested in the air fryer so it doesn’t have all the answers. It might take getting used to if you have had a different air fryer but we really like it because it doesn’t start counting down cooking time until it’s ready to start cooking.