Earlier this year I was offered the chance to try the Tefal ActiFry. I do love my kitchen gadgets so I was delighted to give it a try, and today I'm sharing my thoughts in this Tefal ActiFry review. I'm also sharing a fun dessert recipe in today's post, challenging the idea that an ActiFry is just for chips!
You may be wondering what an ActiFry is, so in short, it's a healthy fryer which uses just 1 spoonful of oil to cook 1kg of delicious chips (or rather fries, for my American readers!). It's not just for chips though - you can also cook curries, casseroles, stir-frys, risottos, meat, veggies and desserts in the ActiFry, to name just a few! I was sent the Tefal ActiFry Express to try, which has an extra large bowl and is able to cook up to 1.5kg of potatoes at a time - so great for family meals!
As the ActiFry is famous for making great chips, that's the first thing I tried in it, of course! I'm sometimes a bit of a lazy cook, so peeling the potatoes, cutting the chips to the required dimensions, washing and drying them seemed a little too far on the side of effort, but once that was done and they were whopped into the ActiFry with a spoonful of oil there was no other effort required whatsoever, so I feel the effort level evened out overall. The fryer has a removable paddle which turns the chips as they cook, which meant evenly cooked chips and no shaking or turning needed on my part, and it also has a handy inbuilt timer so I was able to walk away and leave it to do it's thing while I got on with preparing the rest of our dinner. Small Child loved watching the fryer in action through the clear lid and we all thoroughly enjoyed the delicious crispy homemade chips that were cooked from raw in less than 30 minutes!
The ActiFry is really simple to clean, with a ceramic coated bowl that lifts out easily for effortless serving and washing up. Though I don't have a dishwasher, so wash everything by hand, the bowl, lid and paddle are all dishwasher safe. The only real downside to it is its size - I have a very small kitchen so finding space to store it has been a bit tricky.
The ActiFry comes with a handy recipe booklet to get you started, but there are also lots of ActiFry recipes available over on the Tefal website. I was eager to try cooking something other than chips so I had a browse through the recipe list and was intrigued by the Potatoes, Apples, Hazelnuts and Popcorn dessert recipe. I made some changes to suit our preferences (it needed to be dairy free for a start), and have shared my adaptation of the recipe below. We were amazed at how delicious it was - potatoes for dessert, who would have thought?!
Potatoes, Apples, Pecans & Popcorn
Ingredients
- 250g potatoes
- 300g dessert apples
- 20g popcorn
- 30g pecan nuts
- 2 ActiFry spoons liquid caramel ( I used dairy free coconut caramel)
Method
Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1cm cubes. Rinse well and dry thoroughly. Core the apples and cut into quarters, then cut them into cubes the same size as the potatoes.
Put the potatoes and apples in the ActiFry. Drizzle the caramel evenly over the ingredients. Set the timer and cook for 20 minutes.
Open the ActiFry and add the pecans and popcorn. Continue cooking for 5 minutes and serve warm.
We served ours up with a dollop of frozen yoghurt - absolutely delicious!
So far we've used our ActiFry to cook chips, hash browns (we removed the paddle for this) and the dessert above. I've got the ActiFry chicken tikka masala on my menu plan this week, and will also be trying my hand at making popcorn in the Actifry as soon as possible (Madame Gourmand has a quick 'how to'). We've found the ActiFry really simple to use, very easy to clean afterwards, and overall we are very impressed indeed. I love the fact that it only needs one tablespoon of oil for a large batch of food and I can't wait to try some more of the different recipes in it - it really does have the potential for so much more than healthy chips!
Grace
Disclosure; I received a free Tefal ActiFry Express for the purposes of carrying out this review, however all opinions expressed in this post are my own. I have no affiliation to Tefal, and was not otherwise compensated for this review.
Potatoes, Apples, Pecans & Popcorn
Ingredients
- 250 g potatoes
- 300 g dessert apples
- 20 g popcorn
- 30 g pecan nuts
- 2 ActiFry spoons liquid caramel (I used dairy free coconut caramel)
Instructions
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1cm cubes. Rinse well and dry thoroughly. Core the apples and cut into quarters, then cut them into cubes the same size as the potatoes.
- Put the potatoes and apples in the ActiFry. Drizzle the caramel evenly over the ingredients. Set the timer and cook for 20 minutes.
- Open the ActiFry and add the pecans and popcorn. Continue cooking for 5 minutes and serve warm.
- We served ours up with a dollop of frozen yoghurt.
Daniella Abraham says
Oh my goodness, this looks incredible, I bet it's amazing with sweet potatoes too. Thanks for linking to Madame Gourmand.
Shen says
Is this as unhealthy as eating conventional fried foods? It looks amazing but I am just wondering!
Grace says
Hi Shen, the idea of the Actifry is to provide a much healthier alternative to conventional fried foods - it uses so little oil in comparison - you can cook 1.5kg worth of potatoes in just 1 tablespoon of oil! So yes, a lot lower in fat and of course you control the ingredients that go in so you can make food even healthier with less sugar, salt etc. Hope that helps!