Chew Fun 5.8 Qt XL Air Fryer Review

Chew Fun 5.8 Qt XL Air Fryer Review

Buy it at Amazon: Chew Fun 5.8 Qt XL Air Fryer [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Heats up fast, cooks evenly, uses little oil, great tasting and healthy meals, easy to use.

I already have a 2.5 Qt air fryer, but I wanted to get this larger 5.8 Qt one, so I could make more portions at once and bigger meals like a whole chicken. This air fryer measures 16" tall and has a 12" diameter but is 15" wide including the handle. The power cable is 4' long and heavy duty. It comes with an instruction manual, though it has tons of spelling errors and pretty poor grammar. Luckily the unit is largely self explanatory. You'll also receive a short recipe book with a handle full of recipes, a stainless steel rack, and a 6" non-stick round baking pan.

The fryer bowl is easily removed by simply pulling firmly on the handle. The bowl is a rounded square that measures 11" x 10". The inner basket is removable for easier cleaning and has a release lock and cover just above the handle so it doesn't come apart by accident. I like that this model has a small support tab in the back of the outer bowl that keeps the inner basket from rubbing and thus scratching the non-stick surface (a problem that I found with my other smaller air fryer). Both the bowl and fry basket have non-stick surfaces, and the frying basket has fluted sides and a perforated bottom to allow air to circulate uniformly inside the unit.

On the front face of the unit you have the display and touch controls which I like better than the analog dials on my Farberware unit. You can set the temperature in 10 degrees Fahrenheit increments from 180 to 400 and time from 1 to 30 minutes in 1 minute increments. After the timer runs out, the machine shuts itself off automatically and beeps loudly 5 times. There is no setting for "always on" for safety reasons. If you open the fryer at any time while it is on, the entire unit shuts down (display, fan, heating element) until the fryer bowl is replaced and then it will start back up and pick up where it left off. This helps prevents burns and undercooking as the timer does not continue to run while you are stirring or flipping your food.

There's a mode button to will select from a variety of preset modes, which you can also customize after choosing a setting. I've already made a number of things in the air fryer including a whole 4.5 lb chicken, corn tortilla strips/chips, French fries, potato chips, and kale chips. The only improvement I would recommend would be that the heating element have a mesh screen over it to prevent foods from blowing into it and burning as the kale chips and potato chips are sometimes light enough to "float" in the chamber and touch/burn on the heating element, but the stainless steel rack placed over them while cooking helps to prevent that. Everything came out delicious by the way and you don't have to use much oil to get things crispy and crunchy (but do use a little to keep things from burning too quickly or becoming crumbly).

Overall, the air fryer works great. It heats up fast and cooks food evenly and quickly. With this bigger air fryer, I can make more portions if I have guests coming over and don't have to do as many batches. Since more food can be placed in a single layer, I don't have to turn food as often as with my smaller air fryer. The touch controls are straightforward and exact versus analog dials, and I rarely go a week without using this appliance several times for cooking or reheating various foods. It does a very nice job with prepared frozen foods and reheating fried leftovers so that they're crunchy again.

Buy it at Amazon: Chew Fun 5.8 Qt XL Air Fryer [Affiliate Link]