There was no button for preheating the machine. The control panel had nothing for it. Where’d it go? Why didn’t it have one?
Preheating is essential for crispiness. You know this from so many recipes; some explicitly demand it as a first step. But how do you follow directions if the hardware don’t make it easy?
Strategies for Preheating
The manual from the manufacturer (available here) has a troubleshooting section. In it, it says clearly that preheating isn’t necessary and that the machine were built to perform as-is.
Follow that advice at first if you like, but perhaps the recipe you’re working with calls for a hot start? There’s got to be a way around it; you have to bridge the gap between the recipe and the manual.
So warming one zone is easy. Air fry works for it too; just pick whatever cooking program on the panel that suit your needs. Enter the amount of time you want (a brief period will do) and the temperature you want (which can be as high or low as you like).
Press the start button and away you go. It’ll count down the time. That’s good enough because it provide a proper simulation of the preheating process.
You can use a separate strategy for both of these zone: “I like to have them on at the same time, which is easily done by using the Match function. On both sides you choose the same program; enter the same times and temperatures.
Next, press the Match button and your appliance will adjust all setting accordingly. This ensures both sides heat up at once which greatly helps timing.
In some cases (like when a recipe calls for a different temp in each zone), it’s more difficult. Preheating gets tricky; you can’t just use the Match setting.
Instead, you need to set one of your zones at one temp and the other at another. Then enter the time for each and start them separately. Each runs its cycle independently, which makes it a little messier to manage.
The Match function does, however, allow you to heat both zones at the same time.
The other scenario is when one side cooks faster then the other. Use the Sync function for that. So you can have different times and even different settings, but everything finishes simultaneous.
Set the shorter cook time first, then the longer one. The Sync feature will calculate the starting offset, and they’ll both finishes exactly on cue.
These techniques will work on any dual zone cooking you might want to do. The workflow is a bit different than, but it is no big deal.
Simply pick your program, enter the time, then hit start. That’s it. Set and go. Let the appliance do the hard work. There are no complicated steps to perform. You should of thought about it.