4.5
Deep-fat fryers give food a golden, crispy finish, great for cooking everything from chips to churros. Read our review of this digital fryer by Breville.
The Breville fryer is close to being the perfect deep-fat fryer for home use. It cooks chips and other foods beautifully, whilst being impressively easy to use. The only real drawback is the thermostat is a little unreliable.
Setting the appliance up is nice and simple. Just add oil to the fryer bowl, turn the temperature dial to the desired level (from 130C to 190C), and wait for the oil to heat up. An indicator light next to the dial should turn from red to green when the appliance is ready. You can then add ingredients to the basket and lower it into the oil using the fryer’s cleverly designed handle mechanism.
It takes about 5 minutes for the VDF108-01 to get up to 130C, and then another few minutes to reach 190C. That’s impressively quick.
It was a pleasure to use. The 1kg cooking capacity is perhaps a little low relative to the sizeable footprint of the appliance, but the food it does cook, it cooks very well.
The chips we made came out perfect: fluffy through-and-through, with a lovely russety brown colour on the edges. The outsides of the chips were nicely crisped by the fryer running at its maximum temperature, while the insides were evenly cooked.
In our testing, we did find that the VDF108-01 tended not to cook at quite the same temperature indicated by the gauge. We checked the oil with a thermometer at regular intervals during cooking, and found that the oil was consistently cooler than expected.
With this in mind, we recommend using a thermometer with this appliance to ensure it really is cooking at the required temperature.
The packaging is pretty minimal, with each component wrapped in recyclable plastic. Besides the four polystyrene inserts, every major part is recyclable. (Even the polystyrene is recycled by some local authorities.)
One downside to the VDF108-01 is that it takes up quite a lot of storage space. However, the appliance’s large footprint does have some benefits.
We appreciate the safety advantage of the hot oil being kept at arm’s length, deep within the fryer, and the components are big and simple in design – ideal for cleaning.
Maximum temperature: 190C
Oil capacity: 2l
Food capacity: 1kg
Power: 1800W
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This review was last updated in September 2020. If you have any questions, suggestions for future reviews or spot anything that has changed in price or availability please get in touch at [email protected].
