Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer review

REVIEW – Y’all know I love to cook, but I’ve never owned an air fryer. Weird, right? Over the past month, I’ve been putting the Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer through its paces to see what I’ve been missing. Let’s cook some stuff. To the review!

What is it?

The Okaysou Dance 430 is a 4 quart air fryer.

What’s in the box?

The Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer comes in three parts: the main unit, the frying drawer, and the drip tray that fits in that drawer. You’ll also get the instruction manual.

Hardware specs

• Temperature range from 180 to 400 degrees.
• Up to 60 minute timer.
• 8 preset cooking settings.
• 4.3 quart capacity.
• Nonstick, dishwasher safe basket.
• 12.8″ by 9.8″ by 11.7″.
• 7.27 pounds.

Design and features

The Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer measures in at a shade under 13″ tall, 10″ wide, and 12″ deep. It’s designed as a compact unit to optimize your countertop footprint, taking up just a bit more space than a coffee maker. The sleek black finish looks good too.

The basket itself is nonstick and dishwasher safe and is designed for smaller cooking quantities. The cooking area is roughly 7″ by 7″ across the floor and 4″ deep with a 4.3 quart capacity. You’ll get two generous sized chicken breasts, 6-8 chicken wings, or 8-10 shrimp in a batch without overcrowding.

The basket includes a removable nonstick plate that’s designed to drain oils & fats away from your food. This plate has rubber bumpers that keep it from scratching the sides of the basket and feet that raise it off the floor of the basket.

It fits snugly into the basket as you see here. You’ll want to use a little oil or cooking spray to keep your food from sticking.

The touchpad controls are not visible until you turn the unit on. Press that red power button to power the air fryer up.

Once it’s powered up you’ll have access to all the controls, which are delightfully simple. The big center readout shows the temperature and time remaining on your cooking session, alternating between the two every few seconds once you are running. You’ll adjust the temperature with the two buttons (temp up and down) on the left side of that display up to 400 degrees, and the timer with the two buttons (time up/down) on the right up to 60 minutes. Eight presets run across the top of the display for things like french fries, steak, chicken, etc. There’s a “reheat” preset option on the lower left, and a start/pause button below the display in the middle.

There’s a button on the handle that you push to unlock and remove the cooking basket. The unit will not start unless you lock the basket in place.

When you’re in the middle of a cooking session and want to flip your food, the programmed cycle will automatically pause if you remove the basket and resume when it’s put back in place.

You’ll always start by preheating your air fryer. Make sure the basket is in place. Turn the power on, then use the “increase temperature” button to set the starting temp at 400 degrees.

Set the timer button to three minutes and press start to get going. At the end of the three minute cycle the unit will beep to indicate that it’s done. You’re ready to cook! Note that you can also pause the cook at any time by pressing that pause/play button.

And that’s everything you need to know about the basic operation of the Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer. Preheat, choose your cook time & temp, load the basket, and press play. It really is that simple.

There’s a handy chart in the documentation that explains the presets, which are all basically variations on time and temperature. The vegetable setting, for example, runs at 300 degrees to 10 minutes. Choose one of those options and you can skip all the custom settings. Just preheat, load the basket, and press the preset to get things moving.

The reheat feature is just a variation on the presets at 355 degrees for 8 minutes.

Performance

I’m a pretty good home cook and I’ve never seen the need for an air fryer. But we’re empty-nesters most of the time these days, so I was particularly interested in seeing how I could incorporate the Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer into our usual 2-person meal routine. Small portions, quick weeknight cooks, that kind of thing.

I started my test with some basics. The first cook was with some dry-rubbed chicken breasts with just a bot of oil. I cooked one in the oven and one in the air fryer to compare the finished result head-to-head. Both breasts were cooked at 400 degrees for a 20 minute cooking time with one flip.

I started by applying a bit of oil to the basket to avoid sticking.

The chicken went in for 10 minutes on one side, followed by a flip to finish.

Here’s the finished results. The breast on the left came from the oven the one on the right from the air fryer. You can see the difference in the crust. That smaller cooking space makes a big difference.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the air fryer chicken was still moist & juicy; I really expected it to be dry as a bone. Behold the perfectly cooked juicy goodness! The big difference besides the extra crust? My oven takes about 10 minutes to warm up. The Okaysau 4 Quart Air Fryer takes 3.

Cleanup was also pretty straightforward. The nonstick plate adds a bunch of ridges and holes to elevate the food & drain the cooking grease. I’d recommend a cleaning brush to get into all those cracks and crevices, but the nonstick surface makes pretty short work of it.

Remove the tray to wipe out the bottom of the basket. Again, the nonstick is your friend here. A simple wipeout does the trick. The plate & basket are dishwasher-friendly, but I’d avoid that to preserve the nonstick surface. You’ll also want to avoid metal utensils for flipping your food.

I also tried a couple of tests to see how much food I could cook in the basket. This recipe called for chicken tenders, lightly oiled and rolled in an everything bagel spice mix (sesame seeds, onion flakes, garlic flakes, etc.). The batch on the left was my first cook, where I spread out 6-7 tenders on the plate and cooked them at 380 degrees for 14 minutes with one flip. I was feeling lazy, so I loaded the second batch with the remaining tenders (about a dozen).

And here’s the result of the second batch. They turned out just as crunchy and evenly cooked as the first, but I did need to move them around a couple of times during the cooking process.

My favorite application for the Okaysau 4 Quart Air Fryer is a quick batch of roasted vegetables as a side dish. These are fancy carrots, halved and tossed with sliced shallots and a bit of oil & seasoning. I used the vegetable preset here.

Again, a perfect cook. Just slightly al dente with a little charring around the edges. I’ve been using the air fryer just about every night for this. Toss in a couple of fistfuls of broccoli, brussels sprouts, green beans… whatever you have on hand. Just make sure that larger pieces are cut down for consistent cooking. 3 minutes for the preheat + 10 minutes to cook and you have a quick & easy side without breaking out the cookie sheets for the oven.

I’ve also been pretty impressed with the Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer’s ability to disperse excess heat. The instructions recommend giving it 5″ of space, and being careful around overhead cabinets that could trap steam. I have not noticed that the surrounding area gets particularly hot. The fan is powerful, but not obnoxiously loud.

What I like

• Simple, straightforward operation.
• Small countertop footprint.
• Preheats very quickly.
• Relatively easy to clean.

What needs to be improved

• The nonstick plate has lots of ridges and crevasses; you’ll want a brush to make short work of cleaning it.
• Sized for smaller food portions; this may be OK depending on your needs but you’ll need a larger model if you have a big family to feed.

Final thoughts

I was never a big proponent of air fryers, since I can do just about everything in my oven. But I get it now. There’s something to be said for the speed and convenience of the air fryer, especially if you’re cooking smaller meals. The Okaysou Dance 430 4 Quart Air Fryer is particularly easy to use and maintain, so much so that I am finding more ways to use it on a regular basis. I’m exploring more of the creative recipes I am seeing on social media, so I’ll post more updates as I play around with it.

Update 6/23/22

I never did get on the air fryer bandwagon… until now. I use it just about every night to whip up quick side dishes for meals. It’s easy to clean & simple to operate, and I’m finding a lot of creative recipes on social media to play with.

Price: $119.97, currently on sale for $89.97
Where to buy: Okaysou.com
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Okaysou.