Philips Airfyer - review

When I first saw these Airfryers appear on the market a while go I must admit I was a bit sceptical that you could get 'fried' food without any odour and cooked with just 1 tablespoon of oil. I paid no attention to them until recently when I began my weight loss journey and started making my own chips, roast potatoes etc... from scratch without using a fryer or lots of oil.

I have always been of the persuasion that healthy food needn't be boring, flavourless or mean missing out on things that you enjoy.  I still eat chips made from scratch and they taste just as good (better in my humble opinion) but they can take well over an hour, nothing quick about them with peeling, slicing, par boiling then baking in the oven for 40+ mins.

I was lucky enough to be allowed an Airfryer from Philips to review. First up I made a batch of chips, the instruction manual says for chips to soak the sliced potato for 30 minutes before baking, if I'm honest which I feel I should be, I asked around some people who have Airfryers and they said they don't soak their potato at all... I did soak mine as I wanted to give the Airfryer a fair chance with it's first use. Though in place of the oil recommended for non frozen chips cooked in there I used a 1 cal cooking spray to coat the potato before  cooking and it worked just as well. Imagine, a nice chip sandwich with non of the guilt!

After the success of the chips I got a bit adventurous with my cooking and made a chicken breast stuffed with half of a babybel, wrapped in bacon for myself and littlest baker (Hubby was off walking London2Brighton for Charity, well done hubby!) I served them up with veg and cous cous for myself and to test the Airfryer some more some baked potato stars for Littlest baker. I must say how pleasantly surprised I was at how quickly the chicken cooked, it was done in 10 minutes at 200C, the bacon had crisped up and the chicken was moist and cooked through. The potato stars were equally as quick to cook, just 6-7 minutes  at 190C. 

Something else I like to have is roasted veg such as aubergine, but aubergine tends to take a long time and need a lot of oil to roast in the oven. I wasn't entirely convinced it would work well in the Airfryer but gave it a go non the less. I used my 1 cal cooking spray on aubergine that I'd sliced into 1/2 inch thick slices and baked them for just under 15 minutes at 180C. The aubergine came out soft and nicely browned. A much healthier alternative to roasting with lots of oil. It can be made as a very quick accompaniment to a meal or to be used in something such as Moussaka.

The booklet included with the machine gives plenty of recipe and meal ideas, mainly veg/potato based as you would expect but also some which you probably wouldn't expect such as brownies! Though, I'm still happy playing with my new oven and perfecting my sweet bakes in there so I've not had a go at that yet, maybe one day though, out of curiosity if nothing else.

The machine itself takes up no more space than something such as a deep fat fryer. It does not leave that awful greasy smell lingering for days after use in the way a deep fat fryer does (one of the reasons I used my old fryer just three times before getting rid of it!) and runs quietly.
All in all I'm very pleased with my new kitchen gadget and I'm sure it will be put to good use, I look forward to experimenting some more and enjoying more healthy quick meals produced in it.