It cost me 33p to cook Lidl turkey crown in an air…

It cost me 33p to cook Lidl turkey crown in an air fryer and I'll never go back to the oven

As we approach December families are beginning to think about Christmas dinner.

And with the way that food and energy prices have shot up this year, many will undoubtedly be fearing how much it's all going to cost.

One thing that is helping people to cut their bills is swapping their usual oven for an air fryer.

While there's obviously an initial outlay for the things, they use a fraction of the energy and cook things much quicker.

Many people are already swearing by them for regular meals and snacks, so I decided to check how long it would take to cook a full turkey - and most importantly how much it cost to do that.

With a 7.5 litre capacity inside the Ninja Multi-Cooker I was using, there was plenty of space for the medium turkey, which set me back £15.49 from Lidl.

I picked up a medium turkey crown weighing just under 2.2kg (Manchester Family / MEN)

I'm told you can fit a small turkey or chicken in one side of the dual drawer fryers, but we've yet to try that out.

Now with the multi-cooker having various functions, from slow cooker to bake/roast and dehydrate, I could have decided to pressure cook the turkey first.

But as many of these kitchen devices don't have that option, I decided to keep it simple and stick with just the air fry option to see how it fared.

I had previously cooked a chicken it, but using the pressure cooker first, before the air crisp. This time I was a little concerned that without that, the meat may dry out, particularly as turkey can be much dryer than chicken anyway.

But I went for it nonetheless, simply putting a few chunks of butter under the skin on the breast and spraying it with a bit of oil.

I put it breast down and then turned it around half way through cooking (Manchester Family / MEN)

Following the advice of fellow air fryer fans on the Facebook groups I've now joined - there are lots of them to choose from - I then placed it in breast down, with the intention of turning it around half way through.

Weighing just under 2.2kg I was unsure how long it would take to cook - the oven guidance was 2hrs 12 mins at 160 degrees Celsius, but I went with the 'general consensus' air fryer temp, which seems to be 200 degrees for items like this and set the timer for an hour - knowing I'd be keeping an eye on it.

From start to finish, with no preheat or pressure cook time, it was just over 43 minutes and amounted to just 33p of electricity used.

Had I used an oven - with standard appliances costing 68p an hour - it would have cost £1.50, a massive 355 per cent increase.

The turkey was perfectly cooked (Manchester Family / MEN)

Obviously it's not worth it if the end result isn't up to scratch, but the meat was cooked perfect. As with the chicken I cooked previously, it was tender on the inside and crispy on the outside, with no sign of the meat drying out at all.

When it's cheaper, quicker, easier and dare I say tastier to cook like this, then unless you're feeding a large crowd with a giant turkey, you'd have no reason to use your oven. Mine's already become pretty much redundant.

The air fryer I used was the Ninja Foodi Max 9-in-1 Multi Cooker, which has been reduced to £199 at AO. It's also available around the same price from the Ninja website direct, as well as Argos and Amazon.

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