I’m a huge fan of air fryers. They’re simple to operate, they cook food swiftly and use less energy than our tiny, wholly inefficient oven.
Our Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone is used nearly every day, from quickly preparing our toddler’s lunches to even helping cook several elements of our last Christmas dinner.
I’ve never had any real complaints about it; it has two drawers allowing you to sync up cooking times, even with different temperatures and cooking modes, and it doesn’t require any pre-heating time. It also looks pretty nice too, as kitchen appliances go.
But as good as it is, the drawers aren’t big enough for everything I make.
And with energy bills creeping higher again, putting the oven or grill on just for the sake of some garlic bread to go with our pasta can sting, reports the Express.
So when Cuisinart reached out and offered the chance to trial their Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer and Oven , I was only too happy to give it a go to see if I could completely cut out my oven.
But first, a word of warning. With two 4.3L baskets and a 5L flat oven drawer, this is far from compact, and it was just a tiny bit too tall to fit on our kitchen counter below our wall units.
Having checked the measurements ahead of time, this wasn’t an issue for me, but it’s something to be aware of if you don’t have any open space.
The Cuisinart Tri Zone 13’s digital interface is a breeze to use, boasting six cooking options: ‘air fry’, ‘roast’, ‘re-crisp’, ‘grill’, ‘bake’ and ‘dehydrate’. The temperature for the air fry mode ranges from 100°C to 200°C, and allows for 5°C increments, something my Ninja doesn’t offer.
Like many other models, you can set each basket to whichever cooking mode, temperature and time you want and then sync them up so multiple elements of your dish are ready at the same time.
To ease myself in, I first tested it out with a simple chicken dippers and curly fries combo only to get a shock when halfway through the cooking time, one of the air fryer’s additional features came into play: the shake reminder.
This is something you can choose to keep on or turn off while selecting your cooking settings at the start. I opted to keep it on, as I never remember to shake my food midway, which can sometimes lead to slightly soggier results.
But after hearing the beeps at the midway point, I took the basket out and gave everything a good shake, which led to far crispier results. Forgetting to shake is definitely a user error, so cannot be held against my Ninja air fryer, but in my opinion, this feature makes the Cuisinart air fryer more suited to busy family kitchens like mine.
I experimented with cooking a variety of items in the baskets, from Yorkshire puddings (regrettably not homemade) to chicken breasts and salmon fillets. With a simple press of a button, I could illuminate the baskets and observe my food’s progress through the integrated viewing windows.
I purchased some fishcakes that didn’t include air fryer cooking instructions, so it was useful to be able to swiftly check on their progress without interrupting the cooking time or removing the basket, after estimating the temperature and timings myself.
Naturally, the oven is the main attraction. With a 5L capacity, it’s ideal for 12″ pizzas, toast, quiches, and baked goods, and I was eager to see if it could take over from our oven for lunches and weekday dinners.
The concise answer: yes, it could. During a quiet night in, I indulged in a sourdough pizza, which fit comfortably with room to spare, and was ready much quicker overall due to not having to wait around for 20 minutes for my old oven to preheat.
The following evening, I cooked some sausages in the oven drawer and they emerged juicy and with significantly less mess than when I use an air fryer basket.
The oven also has a dedicated toast mode, so I decided to try making my breakfast in it one morning, but discovered it took longer than my regular toaster would.
The Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L air fryer, with its ample 13.6L capacity, offers plenty of room to cook a feast for the whole family – and then some. You can even bake brownies in the oven section while rustling up burgers and chips in separate compartments.
The crisper trays and baskets are a doddle to insert and remove, making post-cooking clean-up a piece of cake.
The Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L air fryer is available now from Amazon for £199.99 or you can order it from Cuisinart directly for the same price.
While it isn’t the cheapest air fryer on the market, for me it felt like it would be well worth the money just for the range of cooking options and handy features — not to mention the easy cleaning. It’s also much cheaper than my Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone air fryer, which retails for £269.99.
If you’d prefer don’t need the oven, you could opt for the Cuisinart XXL Dual-Zone air fryer, available from Amazon for £121.85 (down from £149.99) or the Scoville 8L Dual air fryer, available for £49.96 at Asda, down from £89.
If you want something a bit smaller, you could try the Russell Hobbs 4L air fryer, currently on sale for nearly half price (£49.99) on Amazon, or the Living and Home 4.7L air fryer which retails for £31.90 at Tesco.