I was so pleased to be picked for a Groupe SEB VoxBox through Influenster.
Groupe SEB
is a large French consortium that produces small appliances and they are the
world's largest manufacturer of cookware, some names you may recognize are
Lagostina, All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex and T-Fal.
I waited in anticipation to
see which product I would receive to review and was pleasantly surprised to
receive the T-Fal Triple Basket Deep Fryer.
While I did receive this product free of charge to review, my honest
review of the product is below.
The
packaging was simple and contained 11 pieces: The outer holder, the removable
oil basin, a removable heating coil, a magnetic plug, 1 large fry basket, 2
small fry baskets, 3 basket handles and the safety cover with window. I think it took me longer to set up my wing
station than it did to unpack and set up the fryer!
The removable heating coil allows you to put nearly every other piece of the machine in the dishwasher which is great! Now that we are assembled, I asked the family what they would like to make first and it was a resounding call for wings.
I read
through the included booklet which included a few recipes and noted that you
need to pat the wings dry and they should take about 10 minutes at 375. I filled up the oil receptacle (it takes
just over 4 Litres to get to the max line - I had a 4 litre jug of oil so it
was perfect) and we were ready to go.
I turned on
the machine and was able to easily set the temperature and cooking time by
pressing and rotating the black knob on the screen (please note that there are
several presets but not one for wings). I placed the safety cover on and got to
setting up my wing station.
Once the oil had reached the designated temperature it sang its little song and the red light turned green.
I had to
make two types of wings as the SO does not like hot wings and wanted a salt and
pepper wing. I also wanted to see if a
light coating made the wings better or not.
So for the hot wings, it was just
a simple Franks Red Hot and butter for tossing the wings and for the other
batch I did a flour, cornstarch spice mix to coat the wings and some spices, salt and pepper to toss them in
after.
The coated
wings crisped up quite nice and added some good flavor to the wing and the SO
loved them
The uncoated wings were perfection, I personally liked them better and they were so delicious I could have eaten about 200 of them!
The process was incredibly easy, you remove the cover, place 7 to 10 wings (depending on the size) in the basket and gently place in the oil reservoir, tilting the basket slightly away from you as you lower it. Once the basket is fully submerged you place the cover over and hit the start button.
The machine will sing its
little song when your wings are done! I
really loved the large window in the safety cover which allowed me to check on
the progress of the wings.
We decided
to try a little sweet treat before we turned the fryer off and wrapped some
bite size mars bars in spring roll pastry and gave those a little fry, I did
not have a recipe for those, so I used the window to judge the crispiness of
the wrapper as a judge for when to take them out. The baskets hang nicely on the edge of the
oil reservoir to allow the basket to drip any excess oil. The Mars bars were a fun treat but probably
not something I would do on the regular.
Once we were done, I unplugged the machine and allowed it to cool, this actually took a VERY long time and if I had dedicated counter space I probably would have just left the oil in the fryer with the lid on until the next time we wanted to make some wings. Once the oil was cooled we removed the heating element and gave it a quick wipe down with soap and water being careful not to get the electrical housing near the water. Next it was time to filter the oil and remove.
We used a
very fine strainer with a cheesecloth inside a funnel, so this was a two person
job for sure. We poured the oil into
the strainer which slowly strained and returned the oil back to the bottle for
next time. I was pleasantly surprised
that almost the entire four litre of oil still remained and that we didn’t end
up eating as much oil as I thought we would for deep frying.
The Verdict:
All in all
I really liked the T-Fal Triple Basket Deep Fryer (FR50AD50) and if you are in the market for
one I would highly recommend this model for its simplicity and ease of
use. It takes about 10 minutes or so
for the oil to come to the highest temperature and it appears to have
maintained that temperature steadily through the process. In fact, I blew a circuit during the cooking
and it appears to have maintained the high temperature even through us finding
and flipping the circuit!
I liked
that there were presets for French Fries, Onion Rings, Doughnuts and Chicken
Pieces which you can cycle through with the preset button. This will automatically set the temperature
and cook time for you. If you want it
to be more or less crispy you can modify the time with the setting knob. I didn’t love the chicken setting as it
shows a full chicken, but presets to 4 minutes which is more likely for cooking
chicken chunks/nuggets that are already cooked and just need to be
crisped. But lets be honest if they put
a picture of a nugget on the machine no one would know what it was for J
The machine
does give off a lot of moisture while it is cooking which can create humidity
and that cooking oil smell in your home (this is true of all deep frying) and I
mitigated that by placing the fryer on the counter beside my stove and turning
on the range fan. This eliminated those
issues.
If I was
being picky I would say I wish that the oil receptacle had a small divot in one
of the corners to create a spout to help facilitate the cleaning of the machine
and the draining of the oil but really it worked fine without it as long as you
were careful.
As an aside
if you are worried about the clean up and you prefer to have an auto oil filtration and
storage fryer, T-Fal also makes the T-Fal Ultimate EZ Clean Fryer (FR800050) which is only 1 litre smaller than
the one I used and automatically strains your oil and saves it in a sealed
container below until your next use.
This
weekend we have the kidlets and we will be making Pumpkin Spice Doughnuts, and
definitely will need to make some fries and wings to add to our Halloween Char-boo-terie
board!
photo courtesy of Brignole Vineyards
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