Space is also a consideration. This is a bulky appliance, and if your kitchen is small you're sacrificing quite a bit of bench space (or cupboard space) for something that does the same thing as other, more standard appliances. And while an air fryer can do some of the things an oven can do, it can't do everything, so you can't entirely eliminate the need for an oven. That's especially true if you are regularly cooking for more than one or two people. Basket style with heating elements: tall, slim air-fryers feature a main unit with heating elements and fans. These have slide-out baskets or trays that slot into place inside. As they tend to have a smaller cooking area than oven-style fryers, in testing we found even results were more likely if the cooking was paused occasionally to rearrange or toss the food around. Some fryers will cut out automatically when you do this, some will need to be paused if you want accurate timings. My second mistake was more a near miss than a mistake. Roasted tomatoes break down and release lots of tomato juice into the bottom of the pan, which is usually not a problem in most air fryers. But because of the perforated side, if I’d have tried cooking any more than I did, there would have been tomato juice spilling out of the holes in the side divider. Russell Hobbs has been a familiar name in British households for many decades, and even after weaving a place into the fabric of British culture, it is not content with resting on its laurels. The company is continuously designing and launching new products, and in this feature, we look at its Satisfry Snappi Dual Basket Air Fryer, which really is a game-changer in the kitchen.

My first mistake was putting the fishcakes in the basket at the same time as the tomatoes, despite having programmed a shorter cook time. I hadn’t realised that when cooking two separate foods with a sync finish, the air fryer stops at the appropriate time and alerts you to add your food to the second side.Whether you want to upgrade to a newer model, or your air-fryer has reached the end of its life, knowing how and where to dispose of your appliance is important to avoid creating more e-waste. Cleaning the air fryer after using it didn’t result in any moans or whines. The dividers and bases of the baskets are removable and can be washed under a tap, and the baskets (once cooled) are easy to wipe clean. Since that groundbreaking day in Berlin, the world has changed significantly, and knowledge of how to keep the body healthy has expanded exponentially. It’s now common knowledge that people need to cook food in a healthier way, and eating ultra-processed microwavable foods does more harm than good to one’s health. In addition, there has been a staggering rise in the cost of living, particularly the seemingly constant increase in energy costs. Having the choice of one large or two smaller baskets makes cooking a complete meal much more straightforward, and there is another significant benefit from this, which is you can cook two different food types at the same time. For instance, try to find any other multi-functional oven that will work in air fryer mode while using the rotisserie !

They all seem to be so concerned with producing an oven that can do everything, that all they have ended up with is a portable convection oven that has lost sight of what their add-on air fryer mode is supposed to do. In addition, the air fryer has a manual mode, which allows the user to set temperatures from 30-200°C in 5°C increments giving them complete control over the cooking. The air fryer also has a food indicator function, and if you are adding foods at different times, the indicator is smart enough to pause mid-cycle, informing you of when it is time to start cooking the next ingredient. First up I set it up as two cooking zones in preparation to heat up some chilled fishcakes alongside roasting some cherry tomatoes. I added around 500g cherry tomatoes that I’d coated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and seasonings. But before I put them in, I removed the perforated tray so that they were sitting on the solid base. Overall, the air fryer took four of the heats, and drew on a fifth, clearly coming out ahead of the more conventional cooking methods. If that was the only consideration I'd be a convert, but there are other factors that are important to me.Air fryers are one of those things where sometimes you’re unsure as to how they work – but we can assure you they are incredibly simple to use and produce great tasting fried food using little to no oil. Using hot air which is rapidly circulated around the cooking chamber, these health fryers create deliciously golden and crispy fried foods without the need for deep frying.

I have been using it every day at leat once for 3 weeks, and have previously owned another brand one for 2 years. In addition to producing great-tasting food, its flexibility and ease of cleaning, the Russell Hobbs Satisfry Snappi brings another significant benefit to the kitchen table, and that’s its ability to save money on energy costs. According to Russell Hobbs, the Satisfry Air Snappi fries your food up to 76% faster when compared to a conventional oven, which will help save up to 58% on energy costs.If you’ve got your heart set on a flexible air fryer that can convert from one zone to two, you should definitely consider the Ninja FlexDrawer - a whopper of an air fryer offering a 10.4 capacity. Yes, it is a tad more expensive, but it converts from one to two zones and offers several cooking modes including bake, roast, and max crisp. On top of that it trumps the Russell Hobbs by allowing you to cook at different temperatures and even use different cooking modes simultaneously. Cleaning I gave the skewers a turn after 6 minutes and they were cooked after 12 minutes. The meat was tender and succulent. All-in-all I’d say I prefer using this air fryer as a single cooking zone, the results are more predictable and there’s plenty of space. How does it compare to similar models on the market? Another frustration was that when I attempted to shake the veg and halloumi, loads of liquid sprayed out of the holes in the side divider. So I had to use a spoon to stir the mixture up instead. Putting that to one side, the final result was tasty and everything had the texture I was hoping for, it just took a little longer than I expected. Converting the Satisfry Air Snappi from one to two baskets or vice versa is very straightforward. Utilising the air fryer in the single 8.5L basket mode requires a connection piece, which sits in the middle and joins the two individual compartments. Using the air fryer in dual basket mode requires moving the connector and inserting metal perforated dividing walls for each basket. The Russell Hobbs dual-basket air fryer is very simple to use, and every food we have cooked thus far has met our expectations. As I’ve mentioned, one of my wife’s major bug-bears with using an air fryer is cleaning it afterwards; the Russell Hobbs designers obviously recognise this and have made its new air fryer with dishwasher-safe components.

In the dual-compartment mode, the baskets can be used completely independently from each other. It is a genius design, particularly when batch cooking, as once one food has been cooked, its basket can be removed without disturbing the other and filled with another food, continuing the cooking flow. Another feature I found frustrating is that if you set your time and temperature and then pull out the baskets before you’ve pressed start, the display switches off and you lose your settings. Which means you have to remember to put the food in first and then adjust the settings - so that you can immediately press start. The main reason to buy this air fryer is the flexibility that comes with being able to split the basket into two zones. But having to cook at the same temperature on both sides, combined with the frustrations I experienced with the perforated dividers, leaves me thinking you’d be better off foregoing the flexible zones. And instead plumping for either a decent size single zone or a good dual zone air fryer. Like many others, we found an air fryer to be a very convenient addition to our kitchen, and since we introduced one, we have used ours at least a couple of times a week. Although my wife has never had cause to complain about the end product, i.e. the food, she has frequently felt the need to mention that the food capacity in our current air fryer was way too small, and I’m not going to get into the words sometimes mentioned before and during cleaning it.

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Firstly, there's nothing the air fryer can do that another appliance can't do, albeit more slowly. Then there's the issue of sustainability. Why use resources to produce more plastic – which will eventually go to landfill – when you have the means to duplicate its function already? There is also a question of how long it will last. Our expert testing tells us that a high-end oven can last 20 years. Air fryers are still relatively new so we don't have the data on how long they last before they need replacing, but some enthusiastic users report needing to find a replacement every two years. The potatoes were cooked within the initial 25 minutes but not crisp enough and although I believe that this was in part due to the type of potatoes I used. I also suspect something else was going on. The veg and halloumi mix was producing a lot of steam and I think this was passing through the holes in the divider and stopping the potatoes crisping as well as they might otherwise have done. The super shiny plastic exterior marks with fingerprints very easily, so ideally you’ll want a microfibre cloth to wipe it over and keep it smear-free. Should you buy the Russell Hobbs Satisfry Snappi Dual Basket Air Fryer? All the removable parts can go in the dishwasher. It does take up a fair bit of space in the dishwasher, but when it’s split into two, there’s a bit more scope to squeeze it in amongst the other things. Overall I found it easy and convenient to clean. We believe Russell Hobb’s new Satisfry Snappi air fryer will be a brilliant addition to the kitchen, and having one to cook with will no doubt help to keep the body and finances in better shape. Russell Hobbs Satisfry Snappi – Where and how?