delicious. reviews: ProCook Air Fryer Health Grill

Star rating: ★★★★☆
Best for: Multi-functional cooking

Price: £179 RRP
Volume: 4.5 litres

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What’s good about it?

The ProCook air fryer and grill is a sturdy well-built appliance with two heating elements, one at the top and one at the bottom. It uses these in different combinations to allow a variety of cooking styles. It comes with a selection of cooking accessories including a crisper basket for air frying, a grill rack and a toughened glass lid for steaming and making stews.

The main cooking pot is divided into two areas to provide both a ribbed and flat surface; use the ribbed half to achieve authentic barbecue grill marks on cuts of meat and the flat half for tasks like baking. There is a small gully at the front of the cooking pot that collects fat when it runs off food during the cooking process, which is what makes this grill a healthier cooking method.

Using the combination of accessories and the 12 cooking functions, it’s possible to use this grill to roast a spatchcocked chicken, dehydrate fruit, bake cakes, air-fry frozen food, steam vegetables, slow cook a stew and many other tasks. Owners of this appliance rave about its versatility and say that they have hardly used their oven since buying it.

With air fryers, you will often hear people complain about the difficulty of keeping the top heating element clean, but this health grill has a removable dishwasher-proof splatter guard over the top element which helps to keep cleaning straight-forward. The glass lid and grill rack can also be put in the dishwasher.

What’s not so good about it?

In the instructions that are supplied with this air fryer/grill, the images of the cooking pot and crisper plate are mislabelled which is confusing for cooks who are new to this type of appliance and could lead you to use the appliance in the wrong way. The instructions also have very few photos and examples of how to use the different cooking settings. This is particularly relevant for the “grill”, “griddle” and “broil” settings, which aren’t clearly defined.

There are three recipes included in the booklet, but again there are no photos to illustrate them. With this grill, there is an integral hood that can be lifted up and down and a separate glass lid, but it’s confusing understanding which to use on which setting. For instance, when cooking a stew the cooking program won’t run with the hood closed; the display tells you to open it, but you can use the glass lid instead to keep your dish moist.

While having a split surface makes the cooking pot versatile, I’d like the option to buy alternative pots for this appliance so that you could choose to have one with an entirely smooth surface (which would be useful for stews and slow cooking).

My favourite feature

What this ProCook air fryer/grill offers over other similar models is its high-sided cooking pot, which allows you to cook liquid-based dishes like bolognese and stew. It’s a very simple tweak that ProCook has given the design and yet it allows you to do so much more with the appliance.

Overall verdict

For anyone considering purchasing their first air fryer, this grill has got to be worth considering: not only will you be able to cook all the traditional oven foods that you can in an air fryer, but you can also cook dishes you would normally do on your barbecue or kitchen hob. It’s a good pick for those who are looking for an all-in-one worktop cooking solution and keen to have the health benefits of low-fat grilling, too.

We’ve got crispy air fryer favourites, from yorkshire puddings to bacon, and fantastic slow cooker recipes too (like this slow cooker chicken curry).