COSORI Indoor Grill Electric Smokeless Grill Indoor & Smart XL Air Fryer Combo, 8 Cooking Functions, 6QT, 100 Recipes,Dishwasher

Such good results. So much awkward design.[UPDATED AT SEVEN MONTHS – SEE END]Okay, I’m a convert: air fryers are a great kitchen accessory. But to tell the truth, I would have tried or bought one long ago had they been more accurately marketed. Since their appearance, they’ve been pushed as “fryers,” specifically some kind of magical deep-fat fryer that doesn’t need any (dangerous, unhealthy, messy) fat or oil. Great, and that’s sold ten million of them to make french fries, but a big market (like me) is probably being missed, because while we’ve never really wanted any kind of “fryer,” we sure do adore our convection ovens.And that’s what “air fryers” really are: compact, convenient convection ovens. Anyone who’s used a real convection oven knows the magic they can do; having a small one for the very specific job of turning out perfect chops, chicken breasts, fish, roast veggies and, yes, french fries without the long preheat times and energy waste of a full-size oven is a real asset. An asset to good cooks, not just someone turning out corn dogs and baskets of french fries.So: idea of air fryer/compact convection oven: a winner. And this midsized Cosori excels at its tasks. In two weeks and ten meals, the only fault I can find with its abilities is that it sometimes takes one attempt to learn the precise time and temp needed for a particular time… but the second time is perfect.However.As someone with some design engineering background, I have a few less than sterling comments about the design and function of this make and model “mini convection oven.” None completely dampen my enthusiasm or approval of the thing, but I will certainly shop carefully, and hands-on, should I ever buy a replacement. Let’s go from least to worst faults.PRESETS — most air fryers make a big deal of how many modes and presets they have. My judgment is that they are absolutely worthless, never turning out the best possible result, and good only for rushed or indifferent family members who want to do three other things while whipping up some fries for a snack. A chart of foods and settings, a time and temp function, a preheat button… nothing more is needed and I doubt I will use anything but these controls for the rest of this device’s life.TOUCH PANEL — it’s 2022. Touch panels are a perfected technology. So why does this device have one that appears to be from the dawn of the tech and/or seem as if it’s old and worn out as well, right out of the box? The buttons are impossibly — pardon the pun — touchy and erratic. They need exactly the right light, on-center touch to work. Not a press; that won’t work. Not a tap; that won’t work. It has to be a precise, well-aimed, downright loving touch in exactly the right spot… and even then, it fails about one time out of five. The many taps needed to set time and temp can turn into a frustrating game of Whac-A-Mole as the buttons respond like a badly-trained puppy… when they want to, and how they want to. Really, this panel should work perfectly for every user and every touch style, but instead it’s an aggravating finger-puzzle every time. I have no idea if this is universal among either Cosoris or other air fryers.BASKET (part 1) — once again, it’s 2022. Air fryers have been around a while. So why is the basket assembly on this one like using something an inventor cobbled together in his garage? To start with, the release button is dangerously placed, right under the natural thumb-grip position, and too easy to press at the wrong time. I strongly recommend all new users practice handling the basket for a good long time, until the urge to press the button, on purpose or not, goes away. Because if you press it at any time except when the base pan is on a counter, said pan will fall. Hopefully not full of scalding-hot drippings. The button should be positioned and work only with a more deliberate action, not one all too easy to do by reflex.BASKET (part 2) — not only is the basket unbelievably slippery on the bottom (from its teflon coating) but the heavy front lip of the faceplate makes it awkward to set down and keep in one place. If you pull it mostly out, such as to check the temp of cooking meet, don’t let your grip on the handle weaken, or it will slide out of the fryer towards you like an attack dog. And don’t take it all the way out and set it on the counter, because if you pull or tug or bump it even a little, it will slide towards you (slick as teflon, remember) and if the front lip gets near the edge, it will pull itself into a fall in the blink of an eye. You have to use maximum caution in opening, removing, and doing anything in the basket while it’s hot. Yes, you should be careful, but this is like a coiled rattlesnake waiting to get you. And unless you develop a practice of removing it and setting it well back on the counter, it will. (Simply making the front lip flush with the pan, so that it doesn’t have this tendency to slip-drop-fall over an edge, or not coating the bottom of the pan with teflon, would help a lot.)And TOUCH PANEL (part 2) — if you remove the basket from the unit, whether the unit is turned on or not, the display goes into the “standby” mode, brightly lit up with dashes all across. It stays that way until you put the basket back in. You can’t turn it off. The basket may be soaking in the sink, or too dirty to put back (and forget about), or in the dishwasher… the display stays on. All day, all night. Very annoying.And TOUCH PANEL (part 3) while I’m at it. The POWER button and the GO buttons should not be side by side. Whoever designed this layout did it from a graphics perspective, not a usability perspective. Even after two weeks and much use, I keep hitting POWER — turning the unit off and erasing any settings — instead of GO… and I doubt I’m the only one. Very poor interface design.But it cooks wonderful food, every time, once you get past these design flaws.– UPDATE 7 MONTHS AFTER PURCHASE –I’ll stand by all of my above (unedited) comments. The basket is still sometimes awkward to handle. The touch panel has gotten a little better, or I’ve adapted my technique to its quirks, but I still have to stop and wet a fingertip sometimes to get five more taps on a time or temp setting.But I’ll add the following points:1) I have used the hell out of this gizmo and probably do 90% of my cooking with it. Every kind of meat, toasting buns, fries (of course!), roasted veggies, even 1/4 frozen pizzas and pierogi. The only thing I cook in the oven any more are long-simmer stews and meats that really have to be broiled (steaks and burgers).2) Don’t use any kind of cooking spray (an ingredient in it is what causes that gunky, nearly unremovable buildup.) Use an olive oil spritzer instead. And hand-wash the baskets after every non-dry item, and run them through the dishwasher occasionally, especially after a goopy/fatty cook like sauced chicken legs. And NEVER RUN WATER OVER A HOT BASKET — that’s why your teflon coating starts to peel. Too hot to touch is too hot to run water on.3) Buy a good probe thermometer so you can reliably check doneness. Recipe times are only a starting point.4) The zillion presets are useless. Maybe if you have kids who are old enough to use this but not old enough to have judgment about times and temps, but not a one has cooked to my satisfaction. When and if I replace this unit, it will be with one that simply has a quick-set time and temp dial. The time/temp set feature is the only one I used after the first two weeks. and all those touch panel issues make that operation more tedious than it should be.5) The WiFi feature is ridiculously useless AND requires you to sign up with a Chinese-based internet service that demands to access your location information. No, thanks. It’s quick cooking; just how far away do you get and still need control, fachrissakes?6) Wishing again I’d bought one of these years ago. As I said above, it’s so so so much more than a “fryer” or just for french fries.Thanks for reading. I’m here all week. Try the veal!

Buy the white one! Great for vegetarians too!I obsessively combed the reviews on this for many weeks before buying it. It’s my first air fryer – I really did not want to buy another cooking gadget unless I knew I would be using it frequently – and it turns out I’m using it a lot!I actually bought this in black as a gift for a friend who actually just wanted some healthier eating cookbooks. Wow cookbooks are expensive LOL and there were only a few recipes in each one that I thought she would actually make. My friend is a no- fuss person with a super busy lifestyle who really doesn’t like to cook so I knew she wouldn’t be compelled to use cookbooks. I figured if she uses this air fryer to cook her usual food – but by using less oil/ fat – it would be a good boost for her plan to eat more healthy. She liked it so much that she convinced me to buy one for myself!I bought the white one and it blends beautifully with my white kitchen cabinets. I bought the XL and although it’s slightly larger than what I need I have to admit the size comes in handy when making things that need more air circulating around them for even browning. For example, yesterday I made an acorn squash – from whole squash to plate in 20 minutes! – and appreciated the extra room in the basket.I am a vegetarian and my husband is an omnivore. I made a chicken dinnerfor him last night that had chicken skin so golden brown crisp that you could hear the knife and fork going through it. If I ate meat I would be flipping out because it did look THAT good!Also, I was concerned that if I make meat in it then my vegetarian food would smell or taste like meat. Not the case! This machine is a CINCH to clean and does not hold on to odors. The white casing also does not stain and is easy to wipe off. I LOVE that white color!While I am on the topic, some reviews complain about a plastic smell or that the machine is smoking. This did not happen to me, but I think I know what happened. When you receive this machine there is a TON of packing material really jammed into the machine to keep it stable during shipping.My machine had paper and tape (!) inside of it. My guess is that the people who complain about smoking and smells did not thoroughly remove all of the tape. It can be hard to miss so take time and care when initially setting this up to make sure all that packing is removed.The included cookbook is extremely helpful. I found that the cooking times were a little long for some things but it’s just common sense. If you have meat that is thin cut, or cooking a boneless chicken breast vs a drumstick, the cooking time will be a little less. Try not to take the recipes so literally that it overrides common sense.Another common complaint is with regard to removing the basket from the drawer. LOL this took me a few seconds to figure out but once you get it, its easy. When you pull the drawer out of the machine you first have to slide the clear colored switch on the handle forward to unlock it or it won’t come out. Once you have the drawer out, there is a black button just in front of the clear plastic “slide” switch that you just push down… and voila, the basket releases from the drawer. That black “push down” button is so perfectly camouflaged into the handle it is very difficult to see, but it is right there hiding in plain sight. To recap: Push forward to unlock, push down to release. Done!Finally, as a person who hates to use oil for almost any reason – hence my purchase of an “air fryer”- here is a tip I haven’t read in any reviews yet. Get a spray bottle, the kind that really mists liquid instead of streams it. Fill the bottle with about a teaspoon of oil and mix it with about 4 tablespoons of water. Just a little oil goes a long way but makes a HUGE difference in terms of the brown color and crunchiness of the food! Now shake that bottle like crazy and immediately mist your food with it. Do not let the oil and water separate! You need very little mist to make a giant improvement. I usually use one “mist” per chicken thigh or drumstick. Since the machine only holds about 6 of these you can see how little oil-water mix you need to use. If you do spritz with oil be sure to do this within the LAST 5-7 minutes of the cooking time, otherwise the heat is too intense and instead of crispy golden brown, your food will look like a charred piece of wood.I store the left over water-oil mix in the mister in the refrigerator or I just throw it out and wash out the mister for next time. If you don’t want to spend $10-15 on a formal “oilMister” you can do what I did and buy a travel sized spray bottle (2-3 ounces?) at your local drug store for 99 cents. Or, if you have some other food product in your house that came in a misting bottle just recycle that for personal use. Works like a charm!I’m glad I bought this machine and I use it frequently. It cooks food really quickly and the flavor of everything is really good, just like “home cooking” should be. Buying fresh meats and controlling the spices, salt, and oil is much healthier and arguably faster than buying some mass produced mystery food and cooking it in the microwave. For me and my vegetarian ways, being able to cook quickly and “cleanly” (no oil for me thanks) is exactly what I want.This makes cooking fun and cleanup is a breeze! Enjoy your new air fryer… and buy the white one! 😀

So far, so goodI did not exactly know what number of stars to enter under the category of “flavor.” I have not *tasted* this air fryer 🙂 However, it does cook tasty food most of the time 🙂 I like it quite well, but I am concerned about what appears (to me) to be thin coating of anti-stick material on it. I belong to a Facebook group, where they warn that this model will chip easily, and then it becomes unusable. I say this only because I appreciated that warning–and I have been extra careful with my Cosori Air Fryer to try to avoid having this happen, and so far (about 2 months in) it has held up fine. I love how quickly I can clean it. In the beginning (before I knew how to use it) I purchased parchment paper and big roll of tinfoil, because I had heard that these were hard to clean up and I would need to use foil or something. I should have saved my money–never have used either because the drawer is just so easy to clean with a sponge and I use Dawn dish detergent specially made for grease. The food cooks well. I have only one small criticism–which is, that food placed toward the back of the drawer cooks faster than what is placed in the front. It’s ok–now that I know that, I just put larger and smaller pieces of food in the best locations. Wouldn’t trade this for anything. Gets a good workout in my kitchen so far.

Far exceeded my expectations.Best cooking device I have ever purchased.Very easy to use particularly if one reads the instructions (highly recommended). Cooks very fast. Easy to clean. Even the app works well.I did adjust the recommended cooking times for meat and fish. I shortened the times. The suggested times will likely result in overcooking.Contrary to what one reviewer stated: “This unit is a safety hazard if you don’t have good strength in your hands. BUT, it practically says so in the Owner’s manual…….. The problem was that lifting the lid up completely, rests the lid on the counter and RAISES the unit off it’s front feet.” Nonsense! The handles are clearly shown. The lid is not heavy. And, the lid does not rest on the counter top and raise the unit of its front feet.It is a great unit. Buy it! You won’t be disappointed.

Best Thing Ever!I got this on the advice of my daughter who raved about her air fryer. This is absolutely the best kitchen appliance ever. I used it multiple times per week. I make chicken breasts, fish, tofu, falafel and veggies in it. We are trying to eat healthier and this definitely helps because it makes it so easy to cook tasty food with very little added oil. Clean up is a breeze due to the nonstick coating. There are tons of air fryer recipes online and I’m having a lot of fun trying them. The only downside is that if you are cooking for more than two people, you have to cook things in batches because the basket isn’t huge. I wish I had several of these so I could cook multiple dishes at once or multiple batches at once. I got the red one which looks great in my white kitchen.