Gino D’Acampo on air fryers: ‘The oven should be worried’

You’d think it’d be a risky business, taking revered Italian recipes, laden with history and the hearts of a thousand nonnas, and shoving them in the hot drawer of a kitchen gadget. But the chef and TV presenter tells Ella Walker it’s the giant oven, resting on its fuel-guzzling laurels in your kitchen, that’s most at risk

D’Acampo says only around 50 per cent of Italian food will work in an air fryer (Haarala Hamilton)

There are two types of people: those who have already joined the air fryer appreciation society, and those who absolutely haven’t. Chef Gino D’Acampo is firmly in the first camp. He’s got three at home, a whole range of Gino branded ones in Asda, and now a cookbook dedicated to them.

You’d think it’d be a risky business, taking revered Italian recipes, laden with history and the hearts of a thousand nonnas, and shoving them in the hot drawer of a kitchen gadget. But D’Acampo believes it’s the giant oven, resting on its fuel-guzzling laurels in your kitchen, that’s most at risk.

“The oven should be worried,” says the 48-year-old. “Probably not in the next four or five years, but in the next 10…”

When air fryers save space, electricity and time, why fight change? “You can take it with you if you go camping, if you go in your garden,” says D’Acampo.

“An air fryer and an oven, they are 99 per cent doing exactly the same thing! The only difference is, the air fryer is portable.”

Hence why he has little time for the naysayers unwilling to cheat on their oven on principle. “If you’re talking on principle, then a lot of people are against many things for no reason whatsoever. An air fryer is the same principle as the oven,” says D’Acampo.

“It shouldn’t be called an air fryer – it is a very clever made up marketing word. [It] should be called a mini oven: an oven [that] has a fan and a heating element. The air fryer has a fan and a heating element!”

Writing his new cookbook around his family was a ‘bloody nightmare’, says D’Acampo (Bloomsbury)

That said, he’s done the research and reckons only around 50 per cent of Italian food will work in an air fryer.

“It would be silly to say, ‘You can do every Italian recipe in an air fryer’ – absolutely rubbish,” he yelps down the phone. “If you want to do a spaghetti carbonara, how are you going to do that!? Impossible!”

There really is no substitute for spaghetti cooked in boiling water as salty as the sea, but lasagne? Bung it in the air fryer. Aubergine parmigiana, cannelloni with spinach and ricotta, polenta chips, whole sea bream with lemon, panettone pudding? Switch that gadget on.

Every time he does, D’Acampo thinks of his late mother, Alba. “My mother was one of those women that used to cook and clean at the same time. And the last 10 years of her life, she lived by herself. She was always complaining that whenever she put the oven on it would be, ‘Too much electricity I’m spending’ or, ‘The oven is getting dirty’,” he remembers.

“When the air fryer came into my hand during Covid, I thought, ‘My mamma would love this. It is perfect for one or two people, and she would have cleaned less. I know she would love it.”

D’Acampo thinks his late mother Alba would have loved an air fryer (Haarala Hamilton)

Born in Naples, D’Acampo splits his time between Italy and England, and as a dad of three, family is central to his food. Writing his new book, Gino’s Air Fryer Cookbook: Italian Classics Made Easy, around them though was “a bloody nightmare”.

“Everybody’s a food critic, including my daughter [Mia], who is 12! None of them just sit down, eat and say, ‘This is great’. No, no, no! It’s my fault. I’ve been injecting this food passion into them since they were born. So you can imagine every time I create a dish,” he says, and you can practically hear his eyes roll.

He recently created a ricotta and chocolate cake. “It was excellent in my opinion. A bit of amaretto liqueur. Sweet to perfection. Well, everybody had something to say. One said, ‘You should have used milk chocolate chips instead of the bitter chocolate’. The other one, ‘Maybe less ricotta’. The other one, ‘More sugar’. At the end of it, I listen to everybody. Sometimes they are right. Most of the time, they are not as right as I am!”

Calling D’Acampo opinionated is an understatement. From the importance of sitting down to dinner (“Are you telling me we don’t have an hour where we can actually see everybody together, relax and enjoy a dish?!”) to not snacking straight from the fridge, Nigella-style (“You’re crazy. What do you mean standing up at the fridge like a Viking? Like an animal?! Why don’t you take the things out, cook yourself a nice plate of pasta?”) he’s got something to say.

It’s what makes him such a lovable rascal on TV, usually flanked by Gordon Ramsay and Fred Sirieix, capering about Europe. However, he and Fred have peeled off together for a new eco-minded travel and food show in Croatia and Austria, called Emission Impossible.

“We did miss Gordon, I have to say, because we like to go as a trio. But this time, Gordon didn’t have the dates,” explains D’Acampo.

“I am nearly 50 years old. We have children and families, and are very much concerned about what we’re leaving behind. We discovered that if we carry on like this, we are not going to leave a very pleasant world, but we handle it in the Gino and Fred cheeky, light way,” he admits. “I mean, we are not David Attenborough.”

A quick scan of his Instagram though and you will find videos of D’Acampo cradling ducklings and being swarmed by fluffy quails he’s incubated at his home in Sardinia. “I like animals because they have a pure soul. They’re not malicious, they’re very grateful when you look after them,” he says, before adding with a laugh: “And the other thing, they make a sound, which I like, but they don’t talk!”

They end up pretty tasty too… “I’m not gonna lie,” says D’Acampo roguishly, “I like them when they are alive as much as I like them when they are on my plate.”

‘Gino’s Air Fryer Cookbook: Italian Classics Made Easy’ by Gino D’Acampo (Bloomsbury, £22).