Giving you the chance to cook crispy, delicious food both faster and cheaper than a traditional oven, it’s no wonder air fryers are such a hit.
These appliances were first introduced to the mass market in 2010 but sales soared when the cost of living crisis hit in 2022 and families were desperately searching for ways to save money on energy bills.
Recent research by Utilita found that an air fryer only costs £52.74 to use for a year, compared to the £316.64 bill households face with an electric oven.
So what can you expect from Beko’s ExpertFry Dual Zone air fryer? The model retails for £149. The product description reads: “Featuring two cooking zones, with a combined capacity of 8.5L, our ExpertFry Dual Zone Hot Air Fryer allows you to achieve delicious cooking results using little to no oil.
“Whilst the ‘Smart Finish’ feature coordinates the cooking times of your food to ensure your dishes are ready at the same time, the Dual Zone programme allows you to use each compartment independently, perfect when cooking both sweet and savoury items.”
This air fryer comes with an impressive range of accessories and these include a cooking rack, a grill insert, a double deck cooking rack with skewers as well as a dryer insert and a measuring spoon. All of these accessories are dishwasher safe, however, the drawers are not.
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Despite its massive size, the Beko air fryer was easy to set up. An instruction manual came with the air fryer and they were straightforward and simple to follow.
To get started with the Beko ExpertFry Dual Zone air fryer, all you have to do is give the two baskets and accessories it came with a good clean before using it, set the appliance to “M” mode at the highest temperature and let it run for 10 without any food.
This took hardly any time at all, so I was ready to go with the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer within a matter of minutes. Thanks to the air fryer’s wide LED display, I could easily navigate through the menu options and temperature settings, making cooking an easy experience.
One thing I struggle to cook without it going dry in the air fryer is chicken, so I decided to to see if using this air fryer could make it easier.
The recipe I opted for was Jamie Oliver’s “most delicious” air fryer chicken which he claims is “super easy”.
Ingredients
Four chicken thighs, skin removed
Two teaspoons BBQ seasoning
One handful of breadcrumbs
Olive oil, for coating
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Method
I started by arranging the chicken thighs on a plate and drizzled oil over them with the BBQ seasoning. Once coated I covered the chicken in breadcrumbs that I had made myself earlier with brown bread.
The next step was to move the chicken thighs to the air fryer. I only needed to use one drawer for this and used two of the accessories – the cooking rack and the double-decker cooking rack.
I found the double-layered cooking rack such a brilliant accessory that my previous air fryer did not possess as it allows you to fit more food in without having to cram it together.
I placed two chicken thighs on the bottom cooking rack and two on the double-decker insert, then sprayed them with a little oil.
Then it was time to choose one of the nine functions on the air fryer, I opted for the chicken setting.
Aside from this setting, there is also one for vegetables, oven/cake, heating, defrosting, grill, skewer, drying and also a manual program that is just created for general use.
This setting automatically sets the temperature to 180 degrees for 20 minutes. Halfway through the cooking process, I decided to turn the chicken thighs over.
Once the time was up, the chicken was perfectly done. Cutting one of the chicken thighs open the inside was still super juicy whilst the outside was crisp.
Not only is the air fryer easy to use, but it’s also quick to clean. While the attachments can go in the dishwasher, they’re surprisingly easy to wipe down, and I found that nothing got stuck to the drawer and plates.
However, two negatives I found were when having to turn the chicken over halfway through – it was difficult to take out the double-layer cooking rack to get to the chicken underneath. Perhaps a tool could have been provided to assist with this.
Probably the most obvious negative is that it takes up a lot of worktop space, so if you don’t need that much capacity or you have a small kitchen it may not be ideal.
Overall, if you cater to large groups of people, do a lot of meal prepping or just really enjoy cooking, this air fryer is a top model to choose from.
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