{"id":176231,"date":"2010-01-13T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"Gizmodo-5446516"},"modified":"2010-01-13T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T17:00:00","slug":"t-fal-actifry-review-frying-without-oil-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/176231","title":{"rendered":"T-fal Actifry Review: Frying Without Oil [Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The T-fal Actifry<\/a> promises to fry your favorite foods using just 1 tbsp of oil. Being an avid fan of deep fried miracles including chicken wings, onion rings and french fries, I just had to try it out.<\/p>\n

Price<\/h1>\n

$300 – Out for about a year in the UK, just hitting the US market.<\/p>\n

How It Works<\/h1>\n

I’ve described the Actifry to friends as an ice cream maker combined with a convection oven. Basically, it’s a big nonstick pan equipped with a constantly rotating silicone stirrer. You load all the food into the pan, drizzle it with a relatively small amount of oil and then close the clear lid. The controls include just two buttons—one for on\/off, one for a timer. Fired up, hot air blows around making it sound, as you might expect, like a weak hairdryer. The idea is that the air blows the oil around and cooks the food while the spatula keeps everything cooking evenly.<\/p>\n

The Cook-Off<\/h1>\n

I put the Actifry through three crucial tests, constantly questioning whether it was better than a convection oven. The first, chicken wings (buffalo style), because you can’t generally duplicate a the crunch of a fried wing in the oven. The second, sweet potato fries. (Battered food like onion rings will just gunk up the system, so I settled for something that’s also pretty difficult to oven fry.) And last, I made straight french fries—the devices biggest selling point by far.<\/p>\n

Chicken Wings<\/strong>
I tossed, I don’t remember how many, chicken wings into the machine. I sprinkled them with a pinch of paprika and a tbsp of oil, then I let the machine go to work. 30 or so minutes later, I smelled that the chicken was done. And I had to admit, the pieces were a beautiful golden brown.<\/p>\n

So I took a bite and…they were chewy, just as if I’d baked em. And actually, a bit overcooked as well, since I was going more for texture than taste.

Winner: Tie<\/em><\/p>\n

Sweet Potato Fries<\/strong>
Traditionally, good sweet potato fries are considered difficult to make—even ordering them off a restaurant menu can be a crap shoot. I actually make great sweet potato fries in the oven, baking them for about 20 minutes before throwing the switch on convection to give each fry a bubbly, slightly crisp skin. Theoretically, the Actifry would cook the potatoes in a similar manner.
Theoretically. What I got, and it’s tough to see here, was basically a pile of fry-shaped mush. It tasted fine—you can’t really screw up a sweet potato—but the fries were limp and occasionally pulverized by the spatula. (The lamb chops, btw, were delicious.)<\/p>\n

Winner: Oven<\/em><\/p>\n

French Fries<\/strong>
At this point, the honeymoon is over. The Actifry is as big as a crock pot, and so far, it’s basically just a crock. But I’m willing to let it all pass if the Actifry is the ultimate healthy french fry machine. A decent fry can be baked, but getting the texture perfect, like a shattering yet silky cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e or crusty yet gooey french bread, is an art tough to match by oven alone.<\/p>\n

After cutting Idahos as equally as possible and rinsing away the extra starch, I fired up the Actifry, almost nervously, on behalf of T-fal.
What came out roughly half an hour later was admittedly good. Taking the first bite, I was surprised by the decent balance of crispness and mushy innards. The golden color wasn’t uniform, but I don’t mind a few extra crispy bites in my french fries, and had I attempted fries again, I may have let them cook even longer (and risked breaking them down for super crispiness).<\/p>\n

Still, munching through the plate of potatoes with my wife, I realized 2 things. One, I’m not sure this is significantly better than what I could do in an oven (with an oil mister and a bit of flipping). And, two, I’m not sure this is significantly easier than what I could do with an oven. (After all, I still peeled and cut up a few fresh potatoes.)<\/p>\n

Winner: Actifry…by a nose.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mostly Just Hot Air<\/h1>\n

The Actifry isn’t necessarily a bad idea or a bad product, it’s just a product that 99% of us don’t need—and it’s hard to imagine that it really sells for $300. For french fries, I’d say it’s a bit superior to what the average Joe can pull off in an oven (results vary, I’m sure, resident chef-types). But most of the fried goodness you want to eat can be bastardized just as well with equipment you already own, if not better.<\/p>\n

Or, you know, there’s always the option to actually cook foods by submerging them in hot fat. Deep frying is about as simple as cooking gets, if a bit messy and unhealthy. [T-fal<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Cooks decent french fries

Can’t cook much else

Costs $300 more than the oven you already own

Exceedingly healthy<\/p>\n



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The T-fal Actifry promises to fry your favorite foods using just 1 tbsp of oil. Being an avid fan of deep fried miracles including chicken wings, onion rings and french fries, I just had to try it out. Price $300 – Out for about a year in the UK, just hitting the US market. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}