Eating healthy is usually at the top of my resolution list. Ditch the Doritos, toss the Twinkies and fill the fridge with fruit.

The key to limiting fat and calories is healthy cooking. But as a girl raised in a Cajun kitchen where fats are the main ingredients, learning to cook without butter is practically impossible.

Last year, our son gave us an Instant Pot for Christmas. I oohed and aahed and said I couldn’t wait to use it.

In reality, I could wait to use that appliance because having a mini nuclear reactor in my kitchen was scary.

I’d heard that an Instant Pot is an updated pressure cooker. My mom had one, and I remember her locking the lid and telling us to move back.

Taking the top off, she said, would cause the food to explode all over the room.

Visions of beef stew dripping from the ceiling was a recurring nightmare.

That was then, this is now, I told myself as I read the Instant Pot directions. Technology has probably made pressure cooking a lot safer.

Maybe. Maybe not.

The “do nots” far outweighed the “dos.” No deep frying, no noodles or spaghetti and, in big letters, do not open the lid before the timer goes off.

There’s 16 keys on the front pad, the instruction booklet requires an engineering degree to decipher and big red “danger” warnings were on almost every single page.

So the mini nuclear reactor went back in the box.

Our Aggie son and his wife went for another healthy gift this year – an air fryer.

Great, I thought. Another appliance to hide whenever they’re coming over.

But wait a minute.

Our son wants us to eat healthier, and he’s given us a great tool. How hard can it be to use an air fryer?

I decided to be open minded and at least give it a try.

At least there were fewer buttons on the front than there are on the Instant Pot, and the owner’s manual wasn’t 100 pages long.

Best of all, there were dozens of air fryer videos on YouTube that looked easy – especially the ones cooking hot dogs and fries – so I decided to overcome my anxiety and cook some chicken I’d purchased.

I have a fear of undercooking poultry so our baked chicken is always tough and rubbery.

All the YouTubers I watched said poultry is juicy in the Instant Pot and I only had to cook the meat for 10-12 minutes. That’s a lot less than 45 minutes, so maybe this air fryer was a good thing.

I seasoned the chicken, rubbed some oil on top and pushed the tray into the air fryer.

The control panel lit up, dinged and made me feel as if I’d started the space shuttle.

For 10 minutes, the air fryer hummed along, and when the timer went off, I thought I’d pull out succulent, juicy chicken.

Wrong.

I pulled out chicken that was still raw. So I flipped the meat over, set the timer for 10 minutes and pushed the tray back in.

I seriously underestimated the power of the air fryer to cook in nanoseconds.

Ten minutes later, the chicken breasts were done all right. They were the same texture as if I’d overbaked them in the oven.

The next night, I tried fish in the air fryer. Despite following the directions to the letter, I could pick up the fish and eat it with my hands like it was a beef jerky.

I’ve learned my lesson. No more sacrificing chicken. No more cooking fish in the air fryer so it resembles the bottom of my tennis shoe.

From now on, I’m going to use the Instant Pot for its primary directive – cooking rice – and the air fryer for its primary mission – hot dogs and french fries.

And put healthy eating on the calendar for January 2022.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.