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Hi and welcome to Top Stove with me Titli Nihaan.
In this episode I'm gonna be looking at the Tefal ActiFry:
A device that claims to be able to cook chips with just a couple of teaspoons of oil.
Let's start by having a look at the device.
[jingle]
The first thing you'll notice about the ActiFry is its size.
It's not a particularly small piece of equipment.
So you'll need to make sure you've got room in your kitchen to be able to store it.
It's actually a simple on/off device. There's no thermostat.
It also includes a timer with a display.
You open the device by pushing one of the two buttons on the front
and inside you've got a cooking basket
and they also give you this handy little measuring spoon.
In the middle of this cooking basket there's this rather interestingly-shaped paddle
which can easily be removed for cleaning by clicking,
out it comes and reclicking in place.
It's always in place during cooking.
The handle on the front flips up and allows you to lift out the cooking area.
The other thing is that the see-through lid comes off very easily as well and can be cleaned.
It comes with a full set of instructions and also this cookbook.
And as you look through it, you realise that maybe you can use this thing for more than just chips.
I'm intrigued by this recipe for risotto and it even says here
that you can use it for Chicken Tikka Masala.
There's also a website that you can go to which has even more recipes.
Check it out.
So the first thing we ought to do really is cook some chips in it.
[jingle]
I've got 800 g of chips here - chunky chips 'cause I like chunky chips.
They're made from Maris Piper Potatoes which are particularly good for chips.
And they've been washed and thoroughly dried.
Now to enable me to do a good comparison, I'm gonna cook half of those chips in the ActiFry
and the other half I'm gonna cook in a deep-fat-fryer.
So I'll open up the ActiFry,
add in 400 g of the chips
and I'll add in a spoon of oil.
This is rapseed oil and I'm gonna cook the chips in the same oil
for direct comparison.
We'll close the lid
and according to the instructions I need to set the timer for 35 minutes.
There's actually a lot of fun watching these things cook
because the paddle turns round really slowly to agitate the chips
and they kind of tumble over one another and spread the oil around evenly.
These have been going for 5 minutes now and there's definite signs of cooking going on.
But one thing that's very noticeable is that there's not much smell of frying.
There's a sort of cooking potatoes smell but not frying.
These have been cooking for 10 minutes now and
you can see that the chips has started to go a little bit brown on the edges.
It's quite mesmerising to watch.
While the ActiFry is going,
I'm going to cook the other half of the chips in clean rapseed oil at a 180 degrees Celsuis for 8 minutes.
I've had to turn my extractor fan on to cope with all this steam that's coming off.
Alright... Time's up.
Those chips look pretty nice.
I've let these drain for about a minute and I'll now pop them onto a plate with some kitchen paper on.
My deep-fat-fryer chips are cooked but my ActiFry chips
have still another 8 minutes to go
but as you can see they're browning quite nicely.
Time's up.
So..
Let's take the chips out
and put them onto a piece of paper
on a plate.
So now we can see the chips side by side.
These are the ones that were deep-fried in oil, the traditional way and these are from the ActiFry.
Let's just taste one...
Hmm..
Slightly crunchy.
Tastes very nice actually.
Very good.
Now I'll try one of the deep-fried ones.
Oh...
Slightly soggier.
But the really big difference
is I can taste the oil on these chips.
I hadn't expected that.
You know, I actually prefer the taste of the ActiFry chips.
Yeah, I can really taste the oil on the chips on this.
The other thing I'll do is
I'll take the chips off the paper.
You see how much oil is left on the paper?
It's quite...
Yuck really.
And I'll do the same with the ActiFry chips.
You see...
There's not a lot of oil on the paper at all.
So in terms of the amounts of oil on the surface of the chips.
This is the ActiFry paper.
And this is the traditional deep-fry paper.
You draw your own conclusions.
So apart from the taste and the mess that chips leave on kitchen paper,
there are some other interesting comparisons to make.
The fat content of deep-fried chips is typically 10% to 12%.
Whereas for the ActiFry it's only 2.5%.
The other thing to say is that the cooking time for the deep-fried chips was about 8 minutes
but it's 35 minutes for the ActiFry.
So if you suddenly find yourself in a hurry for chips, then you'd probably want to deep-fry them.
But why would you be in a hurry for chips?
Other things, that in my opinion, go in favour of the ActiFry is the fact you've got
no waste oil to deal with.
You don't have to worry about changing the oil
and actually, you can use a variety of oils to add flavours to your chips
like walnut oil or sesame oil.
And you don't get that deep-frying smell that fills your kitchen for days.
So the ActiFry does actually make pretty decent chips
and, in my opinion, it has a lot of advantages over deep-fat-frying.
I give it the Top Stove Thumbs Up for chip making!
[jingle]
One recipe that really intrigued me in the little cookbook that came with the ActiFry
was the risotto recipe. So I've thought I'd give it a go.
So I've got all the ingredients together but I've made just a couple of little changes.
First of all, I'm using chicken instead of veal
because it's very difficult to get veal in the UK these days.
And instead of bacon I'm using a Turkish sausage.
But I have kept to the amounts that the recipe asks for.
And that's because in tiny italics onto the recipe, it states that you should keep to the stated amounts.
So now let's get this recipe underway.
The rice has been cooking for 10 minutes and I can see that it's expanding, actually.
Next thing I have to do is adding the meat.
Spread it around a bit and away we go again for another 10 minutes.
There's another 5 minutes left to go and it's looking quite nice in there.
The chicken is cooking.
There's a small amount of water left to be absorbed and it's not looking bad.
Alright. I'll have to leave it to stand for 3 minutes before serving.
As risottos go,
that looks pretty good.
And...
Tastes pretty good too!
The reason that I chose the risotto recipe is normally to make a good risotto
you have to do a lot of stirring but the ActiFry did all that stirring for me
and I have to say it made a good risotto.
The only thing I would say about the recipe is that it says it serves 4 people.
Four quite small people, maybe.
But that's no reflection on the performance of the ActiFry itself which I thought it was very good.
So, I give it a Top Stove Thumbs Up for risotto making.
[jingle]
Now me being me, I thought I'd push this device a bit
and see whether or not you could cook something fragile in it like onion bhajis.
Here's the mixture I'm gonna use to make my bhajis.
There's nothing special about it.
It's the mixture I always use to make onion bhajis.
For my strategy here, it's gonna be to open up the ActiFry,
pour in a teaspoon of oil,
close it down
and turn it on for 3 to 4 minutes to bring it up to temperature.
Alright. I'll start with a couple of mini bhajis and see what happens.
Pop that in.
I can hear it sizzling.
Pop the second one in over here.
Close the lid and leave it to run.
One problem you can see straight away is that they're not going over the paddle.
So they're probably not gonna cook very evenly but I'll leave it to run and see how it goes.
I think I'm just gonna intervene a little bit here.
These have been cooking for about 15 minutes, so let's pull them out and see what we've got.
They've certainly kept their shape.
That one has just fallen apart 'cause I picked it out.
Let's give them a try.
Hmm...
They're not bad
but I think I made them too small 'cause they were not tumbling enough.
I'll try again with a couple of bigger bhajis.
Alright. We're up to temperature.
I'm gonna drop in 5 decent sized bhajis.
Away we go.
Set the timer for 15 minutes.
This has been going on for 10 minutes now and the bhajis look as though they're disintegrating.
Alright. 15 minutes is up. Let's see what we've got.
Interesting.
I think it's fair to say I've got bits of bhaji
or a series of mini bhajis
and an awful lot of bits.
They haven't held together at all.
Well, I guess those boffins at Tefal never imagined that some idiot would try making onion bhajis in their machine.
And I suspect that with a bit of perseverance,
you might be able to make some half-decent mini bhajis.
But, what this has shown is a point I was hoping I was gonna be able to make
and that is, the ActiFry is very good at what it does and it does a lot of things
but it's never gonna fully replace a deep-fat-fryer.
I'm afraid it gets a Top Stove Thumbs Down for bhaji making.
[jingle]
I've pulled my bhaji bits into a bowl.
This is all non-stick and this just pops off
and we can wash this in soapy water.
Very easy.
It cleaned off quite easily.
It's washed, it's dry, it's clean and we can start to put it back together.
The thing that you'll notice about the paddle is that it's got all these
spaces underneath it and it's really difficult to get it dry.
But I have a solution for that.
Pop the paddle in.
Pop the lid back on.
Close the lid and turn it on for 5 minutes.
That should dry it off.
All the bits are dishwasher safe too.
So I give the ActiFry a Top Stove Thumbs Up for cleaning.
[jingle]
So, what have we learned about the Tefal ActiFry?
Well, it cooks extremely good low-fat chips.
In fact you could cook frozen chips in the ActiFry as well, according to the instructions
and it's a very versatile device - cooks a lot more than chips.
On the downside, it's quite a large device
so you need to make sure you've got room in your kitchen for it.
It also doesn't cope well with battered things like onion bhajis or calamari.
So, if that's important to you then it's never gonna replace your deep-fat-fryer.
The ActiFry comes in 2 sizes.
I've been using the 1 kg size but it comes in a slightly larger size 1.5 kg for what it calls "Family".
Depending on where you live and what size of ActiFry you're gonna buy,
it's typically gonna cost you around $200.
So it's not cheap and my advice is to shop around.
I think that if you're a household that fries a lot of chips
then this device will be of interest to you.
It's a lot safer than a deep-fat-fryer because
you haven't got large quantities of hot oil to worry about.
And from the environmental perspective, it's a lot better too because you don't have to worry
about disposing of the waste oil.
I must say, I quite like the ActiFry and I think I'll be getting a lot of use out of it.
If you want to know more about the Tefal ActiFry, the best thing to do is to go to their website
and through that you can contact their Customer Service Department who'll be able to answer
any questions you might have about the device or about what you can and can't cook in it.
Well, I hope you found that interesting and helpful.
In the next edition of Top Stove, I'll be looking at these two products and asking,
"Are they any good in baking?"
So DO join me next time on Top Stove