Many of my colleagues at WIRED love air fryers. But dedicated models are such one-trick ponies, with such a small cooking surface, that I never got on board. For example, Breville’s toaster oven (8/10, WIRED Recommends) can toast, broil, bake, and air fry. (Your own built-in oven might also air fry. Just look for the convection setting.) When you compare it to cooking in a toaster oven, using a dedicated air fryer can feel like cooking in a five-gallon bucket.
So my ears perked up when I saw a model offering an exciting doubling of offerings: air frying and steaming. Air fryers could use some multitasking, like a multicooker that can slow cook, sauté, and sous vide.
I was happy to crack open the large recipe booklet that came with the GoWise. You can do either of the possibilities mentioned in its name, or program a timed combo cook that does both. I hoped the steam functioned like a steam oven and was a bit let down to discover it only steams at 212 degrees, sort of like a steamer basket over a pot of water. A range of steam options opens the door to methods like lower-temperature sous-vide style cooking without the bag, higher-temp steamed sweet potatoes, and great bread. My favorite with the Anova steam oven (8/10, WIRED Recommends) was cooking crab at 187 degrees Fahrenheit, a trick shared by my friend, chef Hamid Salimian. I wouldn't have the range of a real steam oven but, even at 212 degrees, it's a fun bit of latitude.
Hot and Dry
I prepped a list of recipes to test the air-fryer basics, then kick the tires on the steamy offerings, culminating with the air-steam combo. For the air frying, I mostly stuck to the tested recipes in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, Air Fryer Perfection.
Overall, food cooked up nicely but wasn't crisping up as well as it had in the Breville. Asparagus spears tossed in oil came out well but were a bit waterlogged. Cigars of lamb kofte were tender and flavorful, even if the lamb didn't brown. Zucchini fries felt like they should have been better. Unlike other GoWise air fryers, this model has a gasket where the basket meets the body, potentially making it harder to create a hot and dry atmosphere in the cooking basket.
The roughly 9 x 10-inch cooking area, typical for this style of air fryer, didn't help. Those drumsticks, however, were excellent. I set a plateful on the counter, and my wife, who might be described as a vegetable-leaning omnivore, kept passing through the kitchen and making them disappear.
When it was time to turn on the steam, and particularly the combo cooking, I needed to lean on GoWise's 100 Recipes for Your Steam Air Fryer book that comes in the box, as there aren't exactly a host of cookbooks on the subject. Pork and cabbage rolls sounded fun, and I liked the way the steamer was first used to make the cabbage leaves more pliable. The stuffing in the recipe sounded a little bland, so I found something with a bit more zip in The New York Times’ Cooking section. Instead of just steaming the little cabbage packets “until the meat is cooked” as GoWise unhelpfully suggests, I used my Thermapen to know right when to pull ’em. They were great.