Here at My Mummy Reviews the whole of my family get involved with testing out products. My dad has tested clothes, my sister has tested perfumes, my daughter has tested toys and my mum…well she couldn’t believe her luck when I said she needed to test out a Tefal Actifry! To say she was over the moon would be an understatement! To date,  the Limited Edition Black Tefal Actifry is the best review product my mum has tested out for My Mummy Reviews. She is so delighted to now have her own Actifry to cook her family meals in. She says that the Actifry makes life easier when trying to prepare meals in a busy home as there is no pre-heating required and all you have to do is add your ingredients to the pan…set the timer and wait for dinner. No stirring involved! Well at least not by you…the Actifry does it for you.  Tefal is such a well known brand name that we expected very good things from the Actifry.    Well I’m pleased to tell you that the Tefal Actifry has lived up to our expectations. It is fantastic and my mum loves it!

When the Tefal Actifry arrived at my house I delivered it straight away round to my mum. We had been waiting with baited breath to see what it would be like and what the food would taste like when cooked in the Actifry. It was a bit like an episode of The Royle Family…we all admired the box and when we looked at the actifry we were all oohing and aaghing. I suppose it is slightly odd to get so excited about testing out a bit of kitchen kit but when it is something you’ve seen on TV and you always liked the sound of it then I suppose it is to be expected.?!

My mum has had the Tefal Actifry since the end of February and it has managed to succeed in staying put on the kitchen worktop! It hasn’t been relegated to the kitchen cupboard and it has even managed to kick the deep fat fryer out of the house…which is no mean feat!

The Tefal Actifry is a hot air fryer that can cook chips, vegetables, curries, stir frys, meat, fish, puddings and much more. It is an electrical appliance which works by circulating hot food around the food which then cooks the meal. You only need to add 1 spoonful of oil of your choice and then it fries the food to perfection. The spoon is supplied so that you get the right measurement every time. You can cook 1 kilo of chips using 1 spoonful of oil. Tefal says that this means the chips contain only 3 % fat! Yummy chips without the guilt. Sounds too good to be true! But it isn’t! The chips really do go crispy and taste the same as deep fried chips. Obviously some of you may not agree that chips cooked in the Actifry can taste the same as deep fried ones but for us the chips tasted good enough to eat and enjoy. Like I mentioned earlier my mum has actually put the deep fat fryer outside in the shed. . . . so now any chips eaten in the house are either cooked in the Actifry or oven baked.

My mum loves the fact that when you use the Actifry you don’t end up with grease all over the kitchen and she likes that there isn’t much ‘frying’ smell when using it either. Personally I disagree about the ‘frying’ smell. I think there is still a smell of ‘eau de chips’ but I think that is necessary to a certain extent when cooking to make you feel hungry and to tickle the tastebuds. Either way…there is definitely less odour and grease when using an Actifry compared with a conventional deep fat fryer.

My mum thinks the Actifry is much safer than a normal deep fat frier as there is not all that boiling hot fat but also due to the fact that you can set the Actifry going right in the corner of the worktop…out of the reach of little hands!  The Actifry can be used to cook all sorts of meals and my mum uses it regularly. She has followed lots of the recipes from the recipe book which came with her Actifry and there are still many more she wants to attempt.  My mum uses the Actifry a lot when her grandchildren go round as it eliminates the worry of one of them touching a hot oven door while tea is cooking. As the Actifry is on the worktop she can easily put it out of their way when it is cooking food. 

The cooking pan from the Actifry is removable so you can take it to the table to dish up dinner which is another thing my mum thought was really helpful …plus it makes washing up a doddle! The removable bowl can even be washed in the dishwasher but as mum has had no problems getting it clean quickly and easily she hasn’t felt the need to put it through the dishwasher.

The bowl has a fold-down handle which allows you to carry it over to the table. My mum found this handle to be ergonomically made so it doesn’t hurt your wrists when you carry the bowl. My mum has RSI (repetitive strain injury) in her wrists and it can be painful to carry things sometimes but she hasn’t had any problems carrying the pan with the food in. 

When the alarm on the Actifry beeped to let us know that the alloted time had passed all she had to do was dish up the meals from the Actifry and sit down and enjoy the meal as a family. The meal shown in the photos was our first attempt with the Actifry and it was Quorn chicken style pieces, frozen curly fries and chopped onion. When it had nearly finished cooking we added a packet of ready cooked noodles and some satay sauce. The rice was cooked in the microwave so even that required little effort. The meal was very tasty and healthy too as so little oil had been added.  After a long day at work or a long day spent at home looking after the kids sometimes the last thing you want to do is stand at the hob cooking for an hour. The Tefal Actifry can give you a well earned rest and let you sit down and have a cup of tea or watch Eastenders while it cooks your dinner. If Tefal can now make an appliance to tidy the kitchen, wash the dishes , dry them and put them away then please can I be first in line to review it?! 🙂

The Tefal Actifry is not silent when operational but does make a sound that is a bit like a fan. My mum couldn’t hear the noise but my dad and I could but it was not a particularly annoying sound. You can easily hear the TV over it and hear each other speak, etc. You will soon learn to live with this sound the same as you do the fan on your computer and the whirring of the washing machine, etc.

The recipe book that came with the Limited Edition Tefal Actifry is fantastic. It has lots of recipes from around the world and they all look and sound so appetising. My mum is always looking at the book to find out suggested cooking times and to get ideas for more meals to make with her Actifry. There are some nice suggestions for desserts to make with the Actifry but she hasn’t tried any desserts in it yet.

The Actifry weighs less than we expected and it can be moved around quite easily. My mum can’t wait to go away on their summer holidays in their touring caravan as the Tefal Actifry is going to make life in a caravan so much easier. They have always owned their own caravan since they first got married many years ago and as a child I grew up enjoying the excitement of a fun caravan holiday. The Actifry will really add to that as it can be plugged into the electric hook-up and you can sit and play a family game of Scrabble or Monopoly while the Actifry gets on with cooking your meal for you. As mum always does the cooking in our caravan this means that she will now be able to take a more active part in the holiday board games and not have to stand cooking the dinner, like she used to.  Also as you’ll know caravans are quite small and children like to run around! In such a small, confined space like the caravan it’ll be great for safety reasons to use the Actifry instead of the oven as there is less chance of my daughter burning herself on the Actifry as it can be put out of the way of her reach whereas the oven is right down low next to her.

The Limited Edition Black Tefal Actifry retails at £199.99 which is a lot of money for any family.  However when you weigh up the advantages of the Actifry and the convenience my mum would say that it is worth it. To be completely honest if we hadn’t been sent an Actifry to review I can’t say that I think my mum would have gone to the shops and paid £200 for one. The main reason for this would be because she wouldn’t want to spend that amount of money to then find that the gadget wasn’t as good as she hoped and it then ends up in the bottom cupboard in the kitchen, like a lot of electrical appliances she has bought to supposedly make life easier.  However now that she knows how easy the Actifry is to use and how much healthier the meals are,  I can imagine if this one were to ever pack up she will be straight on the net looking for a replacement ASAP!

If you like the sound of the Actifry but £199.99 sounds a bit too expensive for you to pay out then why not look at the Actifry in white instead of black. The white one isn’t limited edition and it doesn’t include the cookbook full of recipes but it is currently on sale for £129.99 (June 2011).

Photo courtesy of Tefal