An air fryer sounds like a luxury for a small RV kitchen, but it is one of the appliances we reach for most, and it runs entirely on our solar and battery system. It handles the crispy food a flat top cannot, with no oil to manage and no hot oven heating up the rig.
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Why it earns its space
Counter space and power are both tight in a fifth wheel, so anything that comes aboard has to pull its weight. The air fryer does: it cooks fast, cleans up in a minute, and does fries, wings, and reheats without us firing up the propane oven. When the Blackstone is going outside for burgers and bacon, the fries go in the air fryer inside, and dinner comes together in one shot. You can see that exact combo in our first cook on the Blackstone.
Cooking off-grid on solar
We do not carry a generator, so everything in the rig runs off the inverter. The air fryer is a real power draw, but our SOK lithium batteries and Victron inverter handle it, even with no hookups. During our 15-day boondocking challenge we cooked this way the whole time, fries crisping on nothing but sunshine. The full electrical picture is in our solar and battery setup, and the batteries that carry the load have their own page.
What to know before you run one off-grid
Air fryers pull a lot of watts while they heat, so this only works on a battery bank and inverter sized for it. On our system it is a non-issue, but on a small setup we would run it while the sun is up and the panels are feeding back in, not late at night on the last of the batteries. If you cook indoors off-grid, size your electrical for the appliance, not the other way around.
Where to get it
The Ninja air fryer we use is on Amazon. The rest of our cooking setup is in our Blackstone and camp kitchen guide, and the power behind it is in our solar and battery setup.