Salter EK5196 Dual Air Pro – 7.6 L Digital Air Fryer, Sync & Match Cook Function, Oil Free Fryer, Sensor Touch Display, 10 Cooking Functions, 60 Min Timer, Non-Stick Cooking, Stainless Steel, 1700 W

Product Information

We decided to try air frying roast potato wedges; we simply sliced up our spuds before popping them in the fryer and pressing the correct setting. Using the included booklet for the times made it super easy. You can cook individually, use the same setting on both drawers or, cleverly, use different settings on each drawer but have them synchronise to finish at the same time. There are options to air fry, max crisp (a 240C turbo setting), roast, reheat, dehydrate or bake.

The Salter Dual Air essentially combines two air fryers side-by-side. You can use either side independently of the other, allowing you to cook one dish only, or to cook two foods – each can have its own different settings if needed. It’s much the same setup as we’ve seen from the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone, currently our favourite all-round air fryer, and that’s a strong starting place. Despite being a budget-friendly option, the T17023 was no slouch in testing, cooking oven classics such as spring rolls and hash browns to a commendable crispness and performing solidly when tasked with more delicate items like meat and vegetables. We decided to use a bunch of bananas that were about to turn, cutting them into thin slices and layering them into the supplied tray. Tip. Add a dash of lemon juice to stop them turning brown. There’s another catch that’s more specific to this fryer. While the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone goes up to 240℃ in its Max Crisp mode, the Dual Air tops out at a rather modest 200℃. That’s plenty for many dishes but, as my tests confirmed, it’s a little gutless for getting the best browning on chips and other items that need a really good crisping or searing. Also, air-fried dishes can be just as healthy as if you had oven-baked them if you use no oil - and there are lots of healthy from-scratch recipes available with the Salter air fryers.The Dual Zone’s Max Crisp function is also worth shouting about, as it cooks thinner frozen foods such as chips, onions rings, and nuggets in a fraction of the time it would take a standard convection oven. During testing, one portion of frozen potato lattices came out perfectly crisp and golden in just six minutes, compared to the recommended 15-minute oven cooking time stated on the bag. This air fryer can also bake, roast, dehydrate, and reheat, making it a versatile tabletop multi cooker. The booklet also explains all the different timings and how to use the settings for air frying, baking, roasting, grilling and dehydrating. How to clean the Aero Grill Pro Upping the game ahead of Christmas dinner, I tested out Brussels sprouts cooked with bacon. This time, too long meant they'd reduced to barely the size of a pea and were very crispy. By Christmas Day, I’d figured out the perfect cooking time of 10 minutes and they were plenty flavourful. Bacon is also a great meat to cook in the air fryer if you like it crispy, but a beefburger dried out and didn’t retain its moisture, so it was almost inedible. Air fryer technology is improving all the time. Older models might take a while to get going, and can require more oil than newer designs. Cheaper models may also require you to parboil chips, which might not be ideal if you’re looking for fast cooking times. Every air fryer on this list has been rigorously tested in real-world settings. Our reviewers measure the performance of an air fryer by examining how well the appliance cooks a range of foods, from chips and frozen hash browns to meat and more.

I was sceptical about the health benefits of air frying but my mind has been opened up to the many options available - particularly the child-friendly meals that could be created from scratch with fresh ingredients but a crispy, fried finish to keep the kids happy.The instructions recommended washing before use - after that our hardest decision was deciding what to eat first. Air Frying

The process for roasting in an air fryer is much the same process as air fried foods. While the setting may require a little longer time, it is worth it for that classic taste. My only minor issues are that the pot is hard to remove to shake ingredients (I used tongues instead), and that the crisper plate is fiddly to remove when using two-layer cooking. Those issues aside, this is a fantastically adaptable kitchen gadget, whether you want fast food or more traditional cooking. Rather than rely on an array of buttons, the Ninja comes with a rotary nob which sets up most of its six functions. It's easier than you'd think to use, and I actually started to prefer the nob over the Salter's array of buttons. It has a good weight to it, and feels very responsive.

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Air fryers are surging in popularity, as we all become increasingly health-conscious and try to cut down on our calories, as well as our energy bills. They're well established now, and more and more innovations are appearing as manufacturers try to create the perfect multi-function kitchen tool. Combining and air fryer and grill in one appliance makes a lot of sense: it doubles up of the number of uses and, for the grill in particular, keeps smoke and smells inside the appliance. Mostly, products like this are very expensive, but the Salter Aerogrill is cheaper than a lot of air-fryer only cookers. That’s hugely flexible, and we found that this air fryer made short work of all dinners, letting us cook two different parts of the dinner to finish at the same time, or just increase the total capacity for one part. Testing, we found that chips came out perfectly, and frozen food was dealt with brilliantly. Some other foods were less impressive. I couldn’t get frozen hash browns to crisp up quite as much as I wanted, for example. Doubtless the limited top temperature is partly to blame here, but I did get perfect results from the Proscenic T22, which only goes 5℃ hotter. And while corn on the cob was fine, it wasn’t browned evenly and as deliciously caramelised as you might get from a grill. Still, it did a good job when cooking Quorn sausages from frozen.