Hi,

Airfryers have the qualities of a really good convection (not forced air) oven but is smaller, more controllable - circulates around all of the product - and you can "shake" it.

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I use to do much the same except that I would blanche in boiling water until soft and then refrigerate and then double fry as you. If done correctly this is a perfect approach although some will debate their preference for sunflower or peanut ie whether it is neutrality or peanut flavour.

The airfryer approach I posted a long time ago from fresh allows you to use olive oil - something you cannot do with the traditional deep fry method because of the low flash point of olive oil. However this method allows the taste and caramelising of deep fry but give the flavour of your best olive oil. The only real compromise with this approach isn't the flavour but the shape of chip. It's better not to cut them long but to cut them into segments so they don't break when you shake! Shaking is a real advantage of airfrying compared to using a traditional oven.

The OP has confused me a little as he was someone seeming to wish to take trouble and achieve thr best result but morphed into a boil in the bag rice person ..... so it's difficult to focus and help!

There are cerain type of chips and I guess situations where to me the airfryer for chips is a perfectly acceptable and undetectable solution. Life is after all about acceptable compromises ie results v trouble. Getting 95% or more of what you are happy with for example.

Many of the McCain oven chip products when air-fried taste exactly like deep fried restaurant chips as the air-fryer does a perfect job with premium oven chips compared with using a traditional oven, which I find unacceptable. They crisp without drying and are moist and fluffy inside. The first time I tried the airfryer I was confused by it because I really couldn't tell the difference between those and deep fried whereas oven chip cooked in an oven have never been acceptable to me.

Most people cooking chips the traditional way will have good and bad chip days and then you have the fryer to keep clean and store and the oil to maintain. The majority of people expressing an opinion about the airfryer approach often do not appear to have tried it but are instead starting from a point of presuming it cannot be as good because perhaps they have tried oven chips cooked by another method or a different brand of fryer as these vary and have different results as well. I'm an experimenter, hence my conclusion.

My olive oil potatoes are a different thing to chips really ... more small roasties.