Did you know that you could cook Spaghetti Bolognese in a fat-fryer? Or Pork Satay? I didn’t either. In my head at least, fat fryer are things that burn down houses, featuring in the Public Safety films of the early 1980’s and living on in my nightmares. They create a cooking fug that it takes two buckets of bleach and days’ work with a metal scraper to get off the ceiling before you can repaint it. They smell greasy and unpleasant and make you smell just the same way.
Of course when your head isn’t stuck like a school girl in the 1980’s, then you realise that, as with every other appliance, the Deep Fat Fryer has moved with the times and got a new image. In the case of the Tefal Actifry that new image is somewhere between Space Technology and Coffee Grinder. I should probably be allowed to explain:
In terms of looks, the Actifry is pure Space-Age. It’s very slick and looks like it should be used to separate nuclei. Certainly not cook chips. Not at all what I imagined a product like this would look like. It is large though, taking up a good chunk of space on our countertop, but the clever design never makes it seem enormous, and I love the viewing panel on the top that means you can monitor things as they cook. There is a simplicity I adore in the operation too: just plug in, switch on and wait for the beeps. It couldn’t get easier.
There’s no vat of fat either, so no cooking smells, other than that of yummy food when you open the lid. You just follow the instructions and add at most a spoonful of oil to the pan, and let the Actifry do the rest. The basic premise of the Actifry is the central paddle in the large Teflon-coated drum, which keeps the food continually rotating whilst the fans cook it, negating the need for more than the bare minimum of oil and ensuring that all your chips are evenly cooked. And there are no less than six recipes in the Recipe Book that comes with the machine, so you really will get your money’s worth. It will also cook frozen chips if you can’t be bothered to chop up a few potatoes. The chips are toasty hot and very tasty.
DH and I got a bit adventurous after the success of the chips and tried out the Satay Pork recipe. And here is where it all fell apart for us. Not that the food wasn’t tasty, since it was delicious, but it would have been just as delicious had we cooked it in our own pans. In fact DH found that standing around for three minutes waiting for the beep so that he could add the next ingredient was more laborious than just cooking from scratch. Yes, you can cook other things in it, but we would definitely say that the Tefal Actifry is all about the chips. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: there’s nothing better than a perfectly cooked chip, especially if it’s a perfectly cooked chip that’s almost fat-free.
Disclosure: The Tefal Actifry was loaned to me for the purpose of this review.
It is available online from all good retailers from as little as £99.99. For further information on ActiFry or any of Tefal’s innovative product range, visit: www.tefal.co.uk.
Go on! You know you want to tell me what you think!