A KITCHEN, it seems, isn’t a kitchen without an air fryer. And Come Black Friday, blood will probably be spilled in the frenzy to bag this year’s must-have device.

I’m not one for kitchen gadgets - a slow cooker is about as high tech as it gets for me - so I won’t be trampling over wild-eyed bargain-hunters in the annual November sales.

Isn’t life too short to queue for an air fryer? Aren’t there more worthwhile, soul-enriching things to do with whatever leisure time we have?

It would appear not. People want air fryers - they want them so much, they’ve been selling out within minutes. Customers recently queued at Aldi stores to buy the in-demand compact oven, only to learn that stocks had already sold out.

Now Iceland has launched an entire Christmas dinner for four, for under £20, that can be cooked in an air fryer.

With household budgets squeezed by the cost of living crisis, air fryers, which heat up very quickly, are more energy-efficient than ovens. And, using less oil than deep-frying devices, they’re a healthier alternative too. They are also easier to clean, as most air fryer parts are dishwasher-friendly.

So I get the appeal. But do air fryer chips taste as good as the ones I grew up on, fried in a grubby vat of bubbling fat? I very much doubt it.

The chip pan in our kitchen was a comforting mainstay of my childhood. There it stood, at all times, on top of the cooker, in all its solidified, grimy glory. The blackened pan must have been cleaned out now and then, although I don’t recall such an occasion. It was just always there - filled with cold, hard fat, with mysterious black bits embedded in it. When heated, the greasy mass turned into a spitting froth. There was the whole ritual of peeling and slicing potatoes, then lowering them into the chip pan. I still think of my mum whenever I peel potatoes - that gentle scraping sound and strangely satisfying rhythmic motion of her peeling and cutting up chips for tea, then wrapping the peelings in newspaper to be thrown out.

And of course the chips were delicious! My aunt still insists on using a chip pan and always makes me deep-fried fish and chips when I visit her.

These days it’s a health and safety taboo. But the chip pan is a sensory delight of my childhood. And a throwback to the hazard-filled 1970s kitchen. Remember the old pressure cookers? The one we had was a massive, sinister-looking contraption with a hissing valve. While it must have seemed a labour-saving life-saver for my busy working mum, there were horror stories about pressure cookers exploding, causing hideous burns.

Modern kitchen devices were often viewed with suspicion. When we got a chest freezer delivered our next-door neighbours, who were so old-fashioned they wouldn’t let their children watch ITV, recoiled in horror. They refused to have a freezer because they thought de-frosting meat would kill you. They felt the same way about microwaves.

As well as all the potentially fatal devices were the novelty gadgets of 70s and 80s kitchens. The SodaStream, the Teasmade, the toasted sandwich maker... Like everyone else who had one, we quickly grew bored of our toastie-maker and it ended up in a cluttered corner, unloved and collecting dust.

So enjoy your time in the kitchen spotlight, air fryer. For you too may one day end up in that lonely corner - the graveyard of flash-in-the-pan cookery gizmos and gadgets.