So … a Philips Airfryer.  We don’t eat much fried food, but we thought we’d give it a go.

It’s quite a sleek, black beast, but takes up a fair bit of worktop space. The first thing we did was some sausages (from the butcher) with sweet potato wedges (as we didn’t have any spuds in). The cooking basket is quite small, so I had to do the sausages first and then keep them warm while the wedges cooked, so not terribly economical on fuel usage,

I liked the sausages – all the fat had drained out, but for that reason, Pete didn’t; he thought they were a bit dry and flavourless. The wedges were nice – done as the recipe book said, soaked for ten minutes, dried, tossed in a little olive oil and seasoning, and “fried” in about 10-12 minutes. But the machine struck us as quite noisy, and it’s a horror to clean. I’d hate to do it by hand, as there was lots of fat in the bottom, and you have to be careful how you put it in the dishwasher because it has indentations that hold water both inside and out. We found this out the hard way when it hurled water across the kitchen floor when Pete emptied the machine 🙂

Next up we did pork chops. I smeared one side with Dijon mustard and set them to cook, and they really were very nice, no spitting, very little cooking smell; and far quicker than using the grill or a frying pan. We had them with root mash veg and onion gravy (see the previous post), and they were lovely. Of course, that’s the sort of meal we very rarely eat!

Tonight I’m going to be doing some chips, to go with a fabulous piece of rump steak from our lovely T L Normans up the rerd (as we say here in Hull). I’m pretty sure the Airfryer will do those beautifully, but I’m not trusting the steak to it!

So, do I like it? Well … it’s horrid to clean, it’s noisy, its basket is a bit small. But if you were the sort of family who eat a lot of chips, or other fried food, I can see it has a place – it’s quick, and easy, and doesn’t make a mess, and of course the health benefits are attractive. We aren’t that sort of family, but if these chips come out well, you never know … 🙂

This post is in association with Argos; you can obtain a Philips Airfryer from them here.