De'Longhi MultiFry FH1394/2 Cooker - Silver

Excellent

Very impressive multicooker. I cook everything on it. I don't use hob and oven anymore. Cook quickly and healthy dishes. Very happy with it. Recommended!

Does what it said it would. Needs experimenting occasionally with sizes and times

I have roasted, grilled and stir fryed in this. It is great for browning meat prior to making a casserole and, in fact, I have made casseroles in it. Anything I have cooked has been more than satisfactory. The bowl is ceramic, has a large capacity and is so easy to clean, nothing sticks and is much easier than cleaning my Philips xxl air fryer (which I also love). I agree that for the price a rack should have been included and an indication of oven temperature would be helpful. Since it has a bottom element as well as the fan element, it cooks very evenly. Overall it is impressive but noisy and it isn't pretty.UPDATE: 17 months later. Cooker still works fine but clear plastic lid has multiple cracks and despite several attempts I haven't managed to find anyone to supply a spare. One day soon the lid is going to split and render cooker unusable. Cooker not listed on DeLonghi website any more.UPDATE 2: found spare lids on eBay.UPDATE 3Just bought a 2nd one (July 2023) since first one gave up the ghost. It is no longer listed on DeLonghi website and I am unable to register it for warranty purposes. Supplier suggested I try the German website. Not acceptable.

Good deal and service.

There are 2 versions of this multi-cooker, the FH1394 is 1.4 kw rated, whereas the newer updated FH1394/1 model is 2.2 kw rated. The 1.4 kw is somewhat under-powered and slow to cook, and only the 2.2 kw gives completely satisfactory results. Otherwise they are identical. This review is about, and only refers to, the FH1394/1 ie 2.2 kw model.This Multicooker is an impressive piece of kitchen equipment, designed by De'Longhi at their base in Treviso, Italy, but made in China. It has all the design flair one would expect from this innovative Italian company and the manufacture quality is high class, but in practical use it does have a few flaws.The Multicooker can be used as a small fan-assisted oven for baking cakes, biscuits, quiche, pizza, bread and rolls, etc. Alternatively it functions as a casserole risotto, ideal for slow cooking multiple recipes. You can use it as a potato chips pan, or as an enclosed frying pan designed to use the very minimum quantity of oil. Because it has an in-built fan in the lid, it can be used as an air-grill for delicately grilling fish, meat or vegetables... you get softer hot air, not fierce radiant heat. Of course, it can be used simply as a conventional saucepan for soups, sauces, jams, and other boiled and lightly fried foods, including stir-fry. It is enormously versatile.This is how it works… there is an electrical element in the base, and a black enamel-coated metal pan, with a folding handle, which fits snuggly over it and a transparent perspex type lid, spring loaded, covers and seals everything. You chose between 6 pre-set programs… casserole – cake – pizza - potatoes/chips – airgrill - saucepan. There are 4 levels of heat and a press button enables you to change the pre-sets to your own preferred choice. The heat is designed to act in all directions around the pan, from the top, bottom and even the sides. Food therefore cooks very evenly. There is a LED timer, again pre-set, which can be over-ridden to timings of your own choice, at the end of which the cooking automatically stops, helpfully preventing over-cooking, burning etc. There is a paddle-stirrer built into the pan which slowly revolves during cooking, so you never have to stir, it is all done automatically for you.The problems… you are limited to 1.7 kg of food capacity. There is a maximum level mark in the pan which limits you to actually using less than half the pan capacity. You cannot over-fill without running into boiling-over problems. There are vent slots in the perspex lid which allow steam to escape during cooking, and in practice too much steam escapes misting up the kitchen unless you have an efficient extractor fan. If you are cooking using water, condensation accumulates on the under surface of the transparent lid making it impossible to see what it going on below, so you have to raise the lid to see if anything is burning etc, this causes the condensate water to pour everywhere and so some mopping up necessary. The paddle isn’t brilliantly designed, it has too many crevices into which food seeps making cleaning difficult. The paddle is turned by a motor hidden in the base and a revolving plastic prong sticks up in the pan making it impossible for pizzas, quiches, cakes, breads etc to sit flat on the pan bottom… a ridiculous design flaw, which can only be overcome by placing a few clean pebbles on the pan bottom to raise the level of an inner baking tin above the protruding prong. Will a plastic prong last for many years? It is difficult to know.This multi-cooker could be improved by having a separate switch to turn on-off the fan, so you can control it because, at present, it is automatic and beyond control. The four heating levels are too much of a jump up and down and should be replaced by a smoother progressive increase/decrease thermostatic type knob, giving finer heat control. Even with 2.2 kw of power, the pan heats up rather slowly, and it took 20 minutes for cold water to come to boil when it was tested… that is much slower than a conventional saucepan. I tried all 6 pre-set programmes and found they all worked well. A quiche baked well, except for a small circular pool of unsolidified liquid cheese in the centre which was caused by the force of the fan blowing air onto it. However, it did solidify later upon cooling. I cooked some Indian lentil dhal in the pan with the paddle stirring it and surprisingly it didn’t stick at all, which is remarkable, since dhal always sticks to the bottom of a conventional saucepan. So this multicooker really works well. It fries chips quite brilliantly… minimum oil, perfectly crisp and non-soggy. Casseroles have a deep well-cooked taste.This multicooker probably will not replace your conventional cooker and oven combination in your kitchen, simply because its capacity is too small, although for a single occupant household it could be ideal and space-saving. A great machine, despite its few flaws.