The airfryer 'kids know best' test

We’ve been trying out a new version of the Philip's Airfryer over the last few weeks to see if even I, as a non-cook, can manage to prepare anything half decent. The results have been mixed, but that is more to do with my ability to prepare food from scratch rather than the airfryer itself, which is surprisingly good if a little cumbersome in the kitchen due to its size.

The airfryer cooks a variety of food in a quick and healthy way using, as the name suggests, air. To test it thoroughly we were provided with the recipes and ingredients to make chicken nuggets and potato wedges, although I must disclose here that getting a little carried away with the potato chopping meant that we ended up with chips rather than potato wedges. But no matter.

My daughter IJ was the judge and the chips/wedges proved a huge hit. She awarded them a ten. The chicken nuggets were less of a success but I think that’s partly because she likes the frozen variety and isn’t used to a more healthy option, to be perfectly honest. Also also because I found them a little fiddly to make and some of the breadcrumbs fell off. Still, I excelled myself by actually making anything that resembled home cooking. I would have awarded myself a ten. IJ awarded me a five.

I’ve been using the airfryer regularly to make chips and I’ve become a little addicted to them. All that is required is a few drops of oil and they cook in less than 20 minutes. To establish if the airfryer really is good value for money I’d need to try out a few more recipes, preferably vegetarian ones. I couldn’t justify its price of RRP £205* if I just used it to make chips.

The airfryer is straight-forward to use and easy to clean. The only issue I have with it is that is seems a little too small to prepare a family meal in. Different food items would need to be cooked separately and kept warm in the oven until the whole meal is ready, which I’d find a little frustrating. For our family of two it is more than adequate but I think larger families would struggle.

So, for chips it is absolutely perfect but I’d need to try out a few different recipes before committing to a price tag in excess of £200*. In this case I didn’t need to as I received the product free of charge to review, but it’s a lot of money and you would need to be able to make good use of it to justify the expenditure.

Further details can be found on the Philips website.

*The item has been reduced to £130 in the Philips shop at the time of writing.