CHEFMAN - TurboFry Touch 4.5 Qt Digital Air Fryer – Silver - Stainless Steel

Everyone likes fried foods. They’re crunchy and soft at the same time. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make them at home. When you do, you end up with a lot of extra oil to clean up. Air “Fryers” like the Chefman help to bring that flavor home. So why buy one over another? Evenness: Compared to my toaster oven with an “air fryer” option, food cooked in this unit is much more even. If food is in layers, the heat still gets around all the items and crisps them nicely. Controls: This has digital controls which default to the most common settings: 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Food cooks faster in an “air fryer” than in a comparable toaster or range. Changing the temp or time is very easy with front mounted touch controls allowing for quick selection of the precise values for the dish at hand. Convenience: As the timer meets the midway point, it reminds you to shake the basket to help with even cooking. The items I’ve cooked already have some crispiness on the outside so didn’t fall apart. I’ve mainly tried frozen, prepared foods, but there are a ton of recipes for the more adventurous. The timer shuts the unit off at the scheduled time to avoid overcooking and drying out the food. Taste: I cooked egg rolls, blintzes, tater tots, and French Fries. All started out frozen and all were hot, crispy, and delicious when done. Cleaning: It’s non-stick surface is easy to clean up with a bit of soap and water. I haven’t had to scrub anything, despite the heat being on the side of oven temperatures. Just wait until after you eat for it to cool off. The manual says it’s dishwasher safe. Personally, I just hand wash things that big as they take up too much space in the rack, especially since it’s so easy. The heating element is directly exposed. Over time, it has the potential to pick up some grease from the foods. This should be minimal as the fan is about the element and the air pushes any oil down into the pan. At 4.5 Quarts capacity, this air fryer was the right size for my countertop and family. It’s small enough that it doesn’t dominate the entire counter. We can cook our fill of frozen foods quickly and easily when needed. I can push it into the corner when it’s not. It’s great for a quick lunch or a weeknight dinner. It beats fast food by a mile, with less grease / carbs and more off options. It’s starting to become my new favorite cooking gadget!

I noticed that Chefman came out with some new models of air fryers, the Turbo Fry Touch, and wanted to try one out. We’ve had a few others in the past and still use one quite often. I didn’t need as large of a one as we have now and thought one for smaller dishes would be nice and the 4.5qt capacity would be pretty nice. Unboxing: This is supposed to be a smaller unit and glad we didn’t get a larger one as this takes up a good bit of space “not complaining though” our other air fryer has a footprint double this. Inside the box is the fryer, tray for the bottom of the basked, and some literature with a few recipes to try out. The unit itself looks quite nice on the counter, it’s not that big and the black and stainless body looks really good in our kitchen. The controls are all touch sensitive and unless the unit is plugged I the control panel is completely black. Setting up and first use: After unboxing, washing out the pan and tray, the manual suggested running the unit first without anything in it as it may have some residual odor and they weren’t kidding, there was more than plenty of odor and should have ran it outside as it really smelled up the house “oops”. So after running it, cleaning and running again, the odor the second time around wasn’t as bad, “plus I ran it outside on the porch to be safe”. We started using it after the third run, there was still a very slight odor over the cooking smell but it wasn’t bad and it didn’t transfer over to the food. By the fourth cooking the smell had disappeared. Using: The touch screen is really nice bright and clear, no mistakes about how to choose and adjust settings. We tried Mini Egg Rolls first; these came out nice, crisp, and well browned. I used a setting at 375 for 15 minutes "only took around 12", and that was plenty, these were also fully frozen so that’s not a bad cooking time as our convection oven takes around that much time to cook also and the insides were piping hot, “super roof of mouth burning hot”, so no issues with cooking going from frozen and having the very center being heated. Then I went on to try out a 1/3lb burger patty, it was cold from being refrigerated long before cooking. I set the time for 10 minutes and started checking it around the 5 minute mark, and at that point it was starting to darken and cook. It did take around 12 minutes to get a very nicely browned burger. I used 400F but the edges came out a little dry, so I think setting it for 350 – 375 would be better giving the center to cook out a little more but so far I was really impressed with how well this worked. And all the fats from it drained into the bottom of the pan. The next item we tested were some “Bureks” that we had picked up at the international store, “we like to grab something we’ve never had before”, and the instructions said to place in oven set at 375f for 25-30min. I set the fryer to 375 but for 15min, and after 12 minutes "I’m glad I checked", because they were already done and any longer they would have been overcooked. We’re both really amazed just how fast these cooked in here, and they were frozen too. Conclusion; This new air fryer from Chefman really works quite well, it’s a perfect add-on to our current air fryer, that one has a stirring paddle and works really good for cooking items that benefit from constant stirring, but for like Egg Rolls it’s too abusive and breaks them apart. And you really can’t fry up a hamburger patty with it. This Chefman on the other hands is perfect for frying up more delicate things like an Egg Rolls, Dumpling “or Bureks”, where you don’t want to be stirring and breaking things down. So in the end these will end up complementing each other and we’ll be able to fix up a full multicourse meal in no time. On top of that, no oil was needed with any of the items we tried, everything inside is nonstick and a simple wipe of come cooking oil would be sufficient if you are concerned about anything sticking. Cleanup was really easy, nothing stuck hard to the interior, a simple wash down with hot water and dish soap plus a light scrub with the brush and everything came right off. The tray inside could be put in the dish washer but it’s small and I wouldn’t even attempt to put the basket assembly in there as it would probably mess up the stainless outer surface, but it’s simple enough to clean up without needing the dishwasher. My only real complaint is how much hot air comes out the back, it’s like a hair dryer set on medium, it’s pretty warm and here in AZ during the summer with 110+F days I don’t want to heat up the house at all. As fast as it cooks it’s not going to be putting out heat for very long, and the simple solutions for us is put it on the patio table and use it there. The great thing about that is the unit is pretty well sealed up so nothing is going to be getting into it ‘Flies”. Plus this model is light and doesn’t take up much room so it’s easily transported. In the winter months when it’s actually cold enough here we’ll be using it inside, won’t mind the extra heat from it at all then. If you are looking for an Air Fryer to try out, and don’t need a large unit for a full sized family “only two of us”, this one is about perfectly sized, so don’t hesitate in considering purchasing the new Chefman Turbo Fry Touch you won’t be disappointed. And if you need a larger unit Chefman offers these in multiple sizes to fit your needs.

When I hear the name air fryer, I think of a purpose built appliance for frying food. For such an inexpensive unit, this device does so much more than just fry; and it has an upscale stainless finish with piano black touch panel that looks more professional and durable than the competition. This counter-top mini oven does a great job frying duck breast with no oil in half the time as in a standard oven. It requires no preheating so starts cooking almost as fast as a microwave. I cooked 2 filets of wild trout (1.7lbs) in 10 minutes. A mixed pound of sweet potato and yukon gold fries cooked in 15 minutes with a couple of tosses in between, though the sweet potatoes crisped much faster, the yukon gold needed to be put back in alone for an additional 5 minutes. The first dish we made was panko crusted fried chicken because, air fryer! With lack of a recipe book or suggested times for certain foods, it was a bit of trial and error. The first batch of chicken was quite dry at 15 minutes, but not burnt; the second we cooked at 11 minutes and they came out great. The only features I felt were missing are a see-thru door and a second rack to make it easier to see if something is done and be able to take advantage of the extra space inside the basket. A recipe booklet or at least a cooking chart would be a much needed piece of info. It looks elegant, it cooks fast and uniformly, and is a very good price.

I got so excited when i got my CHEPMAN-air fryer this evening thats why i tried it right away! I ready and prepare my husband and my son's dinner!

I had been contemplating trying an air fryer for a while and the CHEFMAN - TurboFry Touch 4.5 Qt Digital Air Fryer was a great way to start. I was really impressed with the way it cooked meals. Out of the box, you just get the essentials. You get the air fryer and the cooking basket. The instructions are fairly easy to go through and the cooking controls are fairly intuitive. After cleaning everything out of the box, you put in your food and set a temperature and a time and you are off cooking. It is very simple. I would have liked for CHEFMAN to have included at least a couple of recipes to try out the fryer. Even though the box shows some amazing looking food that you would like to try, no recipes come with this. As a novice to air frying, I wasn't sure whether I could just throw stuff in there in be good. So I searched the internet to get some recipes. While there are some books you can order from retailers, there are also plenty of downloadable dishes to meet your needs. My first meal was chicken and homemade fries. The real problem I encountered here was the cooking area was relatively limited. The pictures for the product show multi-level cooking. Out of the box, you can't do this. You will need some accessories to do this. The attached pictures are what you get out of the box. With single level cooking, the big issue was how to prepare everything and keep it warm while waiting for the other items to cook. You can make an entire meal in this as is, but you will have to do it in stages instead of all at once, at least if you want to Air-Fry everything. As for the size, I was able to tightly fit about 1 pound of chicken tenders on the cooking surface without overlapping. I can see this size being good for probably a couple cooking for themselves. For a big family, this probably isn't going to work well unless you can cook multi-level. As far as the cooking quality goes, this works great. The recipe called fro the chicken to be cooked at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. I just set the temperature and go. The machine has a shake reminder which beeps at the halfway point of whatever time you set. So at 10 minutes I opened the tray and flipped the chicken. The chicken was well cooked throughout. There were not pink or undercooked areas. Regardless of where the chicken was on the tray, it was cooked throughout. It also was not dried out. The taste was very good. The other thing that I wasn't sure about what how much heat would be put off by the unit. There is an exhaust port in the bock where air is blown away from the unit. Surprisingly though there was not a tremendous amount of heat given off by the unit. You can cook on a counter top and not worry. As for the homemade fries, this cooking was much the same. The fries came out golden brown and tasted very good. This was my first time making fries from scratch, but with the way they turned out it won't be my last. I was really impressed. There is one other point I should make. The cooking basket is dishwasher safe. But as may be present with other nonstick cookers, there was a bit of an burnt odor after the machine was used the first time. This was somewhat expected and should go away after a couple uses. In the end, I really like the CHEFMAN - TurboFry Touch 4.5 Qt Digital Air Fryer. It was very easy to use. I just wish it would have had multi-level cooking out of the box and included some recipes. While I would have preferred that I could have cooked the meal almost all at once, I really liked it. I recommended the TurboFry Touch Air Fryer to people looking for an good air fryer.

This is review of Chefman Chef IQ 4.5Q model RJ38-SQ-45T. As unpacking it, it feels light and not that bulky as could be its bigger version of capacity. This is good as can move around without effort for use case in which place aside after usage. On the cooking and usage, the process is simple as many others have experienced and reviewed with other model similarly with under review model. Therefore here below list what spot to caught by my wife during cooking and washing it. Any comparing aspect is based on experience of using Gourmia 6.0 2019 model. 1. It felt the cooking process was faster or more powerful. We relates this most probably it is for being newer model and maybe it is called Turbo (?) 2. The basket has design of open slices alike shark has grill for breathing, and suspect it allow efficiently circulate the air during cooking process. 3. The power cord is quite short, about less than 2ft 1/2. 4. It has alarm during cooking process allowing you to shake (or flip side) 5. Simple to wash. Then among the first impression listed above, below list of what might feel bit annoyance: 1. The basket rack, its bottom side, the border of the edge can potentially create cut alike paper cut during washing process or holding it for cooking prep. 2. In the basket can get sucked little pieces for instance bread crump in between spaces hence need additional steps while washing. 3. Not sure if it is due to its kind of coating, but after wash, doesn’t dry well taking bit longer time. Similar coating used in other appliances does dry immediately after being washed. 4. Doesn’t have preset time by default, nor a comparable recipe guidance at the finger for quick look and have to look for separately. To conclude, Chef IQ 4.5Q as hardware looks simple, does cook as intended and well based on one cooking experience. Cooked Donkatsu, spread bit of oil, and in couple of minute was done well. However, had to setup the time and temperature as guessing right number. Although works as per its intend, feels for the same price or around can get other brand with further functionality and from one time experience using Chef IQ 4.5 couldn’t notice any critically differential function such to say is best. But if all is needed basic buttons, might be appealing to those users, but still for similar price that can get bigger capacity with various functions, and as comment above, not sure if does justify it.

To be honest for the longest time I thought air fryers were a gimmick. I have used deep fryers for so long that I didn't think it was possible to achieve the crispness I expect from fried items without the use of oil. Enter the Chefman air fryer... I received the package and was eager to try it, but saw that they had used styrofoam in the packaging, which is a bit annoying since I recycle pretty much everything and I have limited sources for styrofoam recycling. The device itself is very straightforward, it consists of the main unit with touchscreen and a removable basket with insert. Plugging into the wall activates the touchscreen and it is bright and easy to use. You select the temperature and duration and voila! My first attempt yielded fries that were crispy in the outside and still moist in the middle. But they were not as crispy as I expected so I went to find the manual to see if they had any tips. They did indeed. For extra crispiness they recommend you coat the food items with a little bit of oil. I did that and I extended the frying time by a couple of minutes and the next batch came out looking and feeling better. By my third batch I considered myself an air fryer expert, so I decided to try other things. My onion rings came out wonderful using the same guidelines. Then I tried Filipino lumpias... The first batch came out a bit soft, so instead of using the recommended temperature and time, I went up 25 degrees and 3 extra minutes. This did the trick. So I would recommend you use trial and error to find the combination of temperature and duration you like best. The device is sleek brushed stainless steel finish and looks good on my counter. The only annoying detail is that the fryer defaults to 400 degrees so I imagine that's the temperature you should use to preheat the machine. The insert in the basket has to fit just so but it comes out easily for cleaning, which is nice. So overall I'm pleased with the fryer.

Use: I am a member of Best Buy’s Technical Insider Network, TIN for short. Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews. This is my third air fryer. Second from Chefman. There are those time, uh Football Sunday, where cooking up wings, fries, and other tasty treats loses there magic if I must cook each dish one at a time. My overall impression is that this is a basic air fryer that will allow you to make great wings, crunchy fries, and will give you a nice crunchy crust to non-wet batter covered anything you that you would normally use a deep fryer to cook up. I call this “basic” because everything about this air fryer is bare bones simple. The LED controls allow you to adjust cooking time and change the cooking temperature from 200 to 400. That is everything! The LED panel allows the changing of temperature and cooking time only when cooking is paused. Adding time while the fryer is blowing hot air is impossible. The basket is wide but shallow compared with other air fryers I have used. There is an arrow on the bottom inside of the basket that points towards the back of the unit. This arrow corresponds with a duplicate arrow on the crisping tray. This indicates how the crisping tray should be aligned inside the basket. The crisping tray has three rubber like spacers that protect the sides of the non-stick coating on the basket when you insert or remove the crisping try. The crisping tray also has two finger holes in the center of the tray for easy removal. Finally, the basket has several air slits at the back of the basket to allow air flow. This will make it impossible to fill the basket with hot soapy water for soaking. I was not aware of this the first time I filled the basket with hot soapy water and ended up getting water all over my counter. Don’t be me. This unit shares the same factory new chemical stink that all air fryers seem to share these days. It will take about a week to burn off. I recommend opening some windows or turning on an exhaust fan for that first week of use. The smell will eventually go away. Cooking: The instruction manual has more pages on what you should not do with the air fryer than what you should do. I am not joking. There are four pages, 25-line items, of safety guidelines. All particularly important. But there is not a single page, paragraph, or sentence suggesting how long, and at what temperature, you should cook frozen chicken wings or onion rings. These are common things you would use an air fryer for! There are tips on how to maximize your cooking experience. Tips such as do not use wet batters. Do not overcrowd the basket. Do not fill the basket with oil. Please do not fill your basket with oil! There are also tips on how to cook your food evenly. There is a total of eight cooking tips. I would have preferred a short cooking guide to give me a general idea of how long, and at what temperature, to cook different kinds of common air fryer foods. Other companies usually dedicate a few pages, or a web page, to this. My advice is read your food’s packaging for convention oven tips and follow those until you find what works for you. It took me a few tries, but I found what worked for me. I cooked up several dishes. French Fries, Waffle Fries, home-made chicken strips, home-made crispy steak strips, broccoli potato puffs, chicken wings, and ravioli with turkey meat balls. I included a few pictures of the foods I cooked. I chose to cook the fries, waffle fries, and frozen chicken wings at 400. I checked and shook the basket every five minutes or so. I used silicon covered tongs to flip the chicken. I recommend that you get some silicon covered tongs. It will save you a lot of time and frustrating working with any air fryer basket. Flipping the food every five minutes promotes even cooking. It also allows you the opportunity to judge how well your food is cooking. The Chefman will audibly remind you to shake the basket if you allow it to cook uninterrupted for a set period. The fries, waffle fries, and chicken came out crispy. I did not add any oil to the food. The left-over oil from the frozen fries and the fat from the chicken were enough to make the food crispy. Next, I cut up some chicken into strips, rolled in white flour, rolled in beaten egg, and then rolled in Panko mixed with some seasoning. I cook this at 350 for about 20 minutes; turning every 5. The chicken came out great. The crust was firm and crispy. It was not the nice golden brown that you get form an air fryer. But it was tasty and a heck of a lot healthier for me. I did the same with some steak strips. Same results. The downside to steak is that the coating does not stick to the finished steak like it does the chicken. Not a big deal. It still tasted good and gave a nice crunch when bitten into. Finally, I boiled up some raviolis on my stove, lightly covered them in olive oil, and then tossed them in breadcrumbs. I put these in the air fryer along with some tiny turkey meat balls. The meat balls came out crispy. The raviolis did not come out as crispy as I thought they would. The pasta was a bit rubbery. For now, I am assuming that I have not found the best way of making this work. However, the meal was better than I expected for a first attempt. I will try this again until I have proven I can get the results I am after. It was a worthwhile lunch experiment. You can see the results in my attached photos. Cleanup: The Chefman is a snap to clean. At least for now. Food slides off the non-stick coating without too much fuss. Over time, however, grime will build on the basket and the crisping tray. This will make clean up slightly more challenging. This has happened with my other air fryers. Let the basket soak in hot soapy water and you are good to go for your next air frying dish. You will also need to clean the inside of the air fryer, including the heating coil, from time to time with a damp cloth. Please be sure to unplug the unit before cleaning. My recommendation is to unplug the unit when you are done cooking. Final thoughts: This is a basic air fryer. It is a great way to get into the world of air frying to see if this is something for you. I think the digital controls or overly simplistic. I would like to have seen some per-programmed functions such as bake, air fry, and warming. I would also would have liked to have the ability to change time and temperature while the air fryer is cooking. I think Chefman missed an opportunity by no including a cooking guide. Chefman’s competitors do this today. The air fryer does exactly what it sets out to do. It makes good dishes without any fan fair. If you are looking for something simple to use and easy to maintain then I recommend that you give this Chefman air fryer a try. Personally, I expect to get some give this air fryer a healthy workout this football season. Thank you for reading my review.