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Pros

  • excellent cooking performance, small size is well-suited to snack portions and ensures easy storage

Cons

  • temperature takes a while to recover after adding ingredients, small size limits the fryer’s cooking potential

Coopers of Stortford compact mini fryer summary

Minuscule it may be, but the Coopers of Stortford compact mini fryer cooks a mean chip. This fryer heats up and cooks very well – although it won’t feed a family.

This fryer is best suited to making individual portions of chips and other fried foods, or for making snack-sized portions for two. If you’d like to take a restrained approach to deep-frying, this may prove to be a good thing. The fryer's circular design is well suited to making onion rings.

The packaging used with this appliance is minimal, and largely recyclable.

Available from Coopers of Stortford (£24.99)

How was the Coopers of Stortford fryer to use?

Setting up this appliance is incredibly easy. The basket and the handle fit together and into the fryer intuitively, and turning the fryer on is a simple matter of turning its thermostat dial. One frustrating aspect is that the ‘ready’ indicator light doesn’t turn on until the temperature reaches 140C. Plenty of us want to fry things at a lower temperature than that.

With that said, we were very impressed with the accuracy of the thermostat. The indicator light turned on at the exact moment our kitchen thermometer showed the temperature exceeding 140C.

In our testing, the mini fryer took less than 4 minutes to get up to 130C, impressively fast relative to most models we tested. (Please note, the instruction manual specifically advises the user to leave the fryer for 8 minutes to heat up to 140C).

The temperature dropped to around 110C after we added our chips, and it took a few minutes to recover.

The chips we cooked were perfect: really crisp on the outside, perfectly fluffy on the inside and evenly cooked throughout the batches.

We recommend reading the instruction manual, which offers good advice on how to use the fryer, and on deep-frying food more generally.

Coopers of Stortford mini deep fat fryer being used to make chips in a kitchen

How practical is the size of the Coopers of Stortford fryer?

There is one tough question buyers should ask themselves about the fryer: is it big enough? In our view, the basket actually holds a lot more chips than expected.

The portion is admittedly at the smaller end of the scale – a hearty fries for one or a snack for two. So, while this is an excellent choice of fryer for making small batches, it’s not suitable for family cooking.

On the other hand, there are some great benefits to its size. Its tiny footprint makes it very easy to store, and cleaning the appliance can be done very quickly.

Available from Coopers of Stortford (£24.99)

Coopers of Stortford compact mini fryer specifications

Maximum temperature: 190C
Oil capacity: 0.5l
Food capacity: one large portion/two small portions of chips
Power: 600W

More on deep-frying

How to deep-fry safely
26 best deep-fried recipes
Best deep-fat fryers
Is air frying healthy?
The best air fryers

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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].

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