Political correctness - not for me! (Delonghi Deep Fryer)

Member Name: MaryanneH

Product:	Delonghi Deep Fryer
Date:	17/11/04 (1904 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cleaning System

Disadvantages: Price

Have you noticed these days that to even admit to cooking with fat gets looks of shear shock and horror from all of your dieting, and non dieting friends. There is something about today’s society that there are whole food groups that we feel guilty about enjoying, and so diminish the enjoyment of food. The biggest item of guilt factor is to admit that you use any form of fat in your diet.

Now I have been guilty of the same state of prejudice for sometime now, In the early days of our marriage we owned a deep fat fryer and used it from time to time and it got greasy and horrid and eventually we threw it away declaring to the world that ‘Oven chips are healthier’. However, just recently I have become not so sure, there is something about the taste of oven chips that does not taste completely natural, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t enjoying them. So when my kids came back from Granny’s having tasted the real thing, to the amusement of my Dad who delighted in relating the story of my little one going into Granny saying, ‘Grampy is doing something very odd in the kitchen, he’s chopping potatoes into chip shapes’, they begged and we succumbed to buying the Delonghi Deep Fat Fryer.

So why choose Delonghi?

The main motivation in our search for a chip fryer was that it must be easy to clean. I remember very clearly the horrors of draining the fat and spending way too much time cleaning the thing. So there was no other choice for us, we wanted the Delonghi because of the cleaning system.

The box contained the fryer itself, a chip basket with a detachable handle and a strange white flexi-stick type thing. So we pulled the fryer out and went straight away to the cleaning system, this is in the form of a small length of rubber tube that is neatly tucked away into the unit, and when you first open it up it flops out, and I am sorry the only way I can describe this flopping motion is phallic like! So I filled the unit with soapy water for the initial clean and nothing happened – it was at that point I realised I was suffering from a dopey moment and I hadn’t taken the lid off the tube. It worked wonderfully and all the water soaked cleanly away, the purpose of the flexi-stick is to clean the tube out afterwards.

The next stage was filling it with oil, we have the smallest size which takes 1.3 litres of oil, and I chopped up the potatoes into chips. It takes about 10 minutes to heat up to a temperature suitable for chips and the instruction book is very good as to how long the chips should take, which is 10 minutes for a full basket and then reheat the oil and drop them down for a further 4 minutes. This is much less for a half basket.

As I mentioned ours is the smallest model, which is sufficient for a family of 4, just but really won’t do any more and I would probably say is better for 2 people. The main reason for this is the basket is long and shallow, which means it does feel a little unstable when completely full, so it’s not as easy to shake and separate the chips to make sure they are all cooked evenly. On half a basket full this isn’t a problem but that doesn’t give you loads of chips.

The main advantage of buying Delonghi is without a doubt the cleaning system, each time we use it we wait for the fat to cool and then drain and clean it, so we will never again have a yucky greasy fat fryer. Cleaning each time also keeps the fat cleaner as all the crumbs that gather at the bottom are drained off each time. They recommend that you replace the fat completely after 8 uses, but be honest, how many of you who have a fat fryer have ever done that!

There are however disadvantages to this fryer, the main one being the price, for the £29.99 that we paid you could buy a much bigger model with a sturdy basket. The bigger Delonghi models are in the region of £50, then you can pay more to get one that rotates out of the Fat so reducing the time your food is subjected to the horrors of fat! For me these disadvantages are a non issue, the smaller one is big enough for our needs and above all it is clean.

So what about the food?

Well the first thing I will do is stand up a little for fat in the diet! Saturated fats form an essential part of our diet, they provide the building blocks for cell membranes and it slows down the absorption of our food, this means quite simply that you can go for longer without feeling hungry. It also acts as carriers in the body for important vitamins.

The first meal we had using the fryer was a really ‘healthy’ Lasagne and chips, and I can honestly say it is the most I have enjoyed a meal in a long time, and most importantly I did not feel hungry once I had eaten it. This meant I did not spend the evening thinking (and succumbing to temptation) of any chocolate that we had in the house.

Now I am not going to take my political incorrectness to a point where I tell you all to go and have chips morning, noon and night, we have probably used it once a week since we had it and the really crazy thing, I have more energy after using it and without making any effort I seem to have lost half a stone, although I certainly won’t be making any claims that this is related.

Thank you for reading.

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