Dreo ChefMaker

Verdict

The Dreo ChefMaker is one of the best air fryers I’ve ever tested. It offers fantastic cooking performance across a range of food, as well as offering the added benefit of its Chef Mode and probe cooking methods for ultra-precise results. It’s also easy to program and looks excellent. While this is an expensive air fryer, its quality results and range of cooking options make it well worth the money.

Introduction

The Dreo ChefMaker aims to solve the issues that a lot of us have with being uncertain as to whether our food is really done on the inside.

It’s a special kind of air fryer as it’s one of the only options that has a temperature probe, so you can stop cooking when your food is perfectly cooked through. That becomes central to the way it operates, as well as being one of the reasons why this is one of the most premium options.

It’s far above the price of some of our top contenders including the Cosori 6L Turbo Blaze and the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer Air Fryer 10.4L AF500UK, carrying a high retail price of £359/$359, and therefore has to do an awful lot to stake a claim to the crown of being the best air fryer we’ve tested.

Design and features

• Sleek, curved chassis
• Lots of modes to use
• Easy to program with screen and app control

Compared to the conventional grey or black boxes that modern kitchen appliances (air fryers included) tend to be, the Dreo ChefMaker is like a breath of fresh air. It’s sleek and modern with a curved chassis, and will look fantastic in any forward-thinking kitchen. Against the likes of the Cosori 6.4L Dual Blaze, and even my trusty Ninja AF400UK, it looks space-age.

It is taller than competing options, meaning it may be a little more difficult to fit under kitchen units if you have a lip on them, but it’s still easy enough to manoeuvre and position. The 6-litre basket capacity is perfectly adequate for medium-sized families and can fit fair portions inside of anything you wish to cook.

There isn’t a button on the basket for added security, even if the rounded orange circle on the top part of the handle made it initially look like there was. The drawer feels sturdy and carries a degree of heft to it, while also featuring a convenient window for viewing food as it cooks. You also attach the probe via magnets to the back of the basket, and it lines up with an indent on the chassis of the ChefMaker for a secure fit.

The default crisper plate inside the ChefMaker’s basket isn’t the best in terms of its quality, feeling cheaper compared to the quality of the other accessories and the ChefMaker itself. At least it comes with lots of holes for drainage and excellent airflow. By contrast, the grill plate that comes with it for cooking steak and other meat is much sturdier.

The ChefMaker’s control panel is intuitive by offering a bright and sizeable screen for displaying functions, separated into different sub-menus, such as ‘Classic Cook’ for more conventional modes including Air Fry, Broil (grill) and Roast, as well as the ChefMaker’s own Chef Mode and Probe Cook. From this menu, you can also enter the settings for connecting the ChefMaker to your internet and enable maintenance processes such as draining the water tank or a full descaling procedure.

Programming the ChefMaker is a doddle, whether you’re setting a specific mode in Classic Cook or selecting a type of food on the appliance’s Chef Mode. While the screen is not a touchscreen, using the dedicated buttons is convenient, and you also have a lot of control over the ChefMaker with precise temperature control with five degree increments, as well as a minute-by-minute temperature counter. It’s also easy to change either on the fly when cooking with the respective arrows.

For the Chef Mode, it’s more a case of selecting the type of food you wish to cook, and following the on-screen advice. The ChefMaker automatically adjusts cooking time and its procedure based on the type of food you’re cooking, and the selected mode, and also states if you either need to use the probe or water tank with what you’re cooking. For the likes of a Ribeye Steak, you can choose between a grill mode, as well as the recommended sous vide option.

With the Probe Cook, it involves setting a target temperature for the food to cook to using the bundled probe, as well as an ambient temperature to cook the outside at.

There are recommendations contained in the ChefMaker’s numerous pieces of guidance as for internal and ambient temperatures, which are mighty helpful.

There is also a lot of guidance and convenient features contained on Dreo’s app, which for the ChefMaker involves a bucket-load of recipes to choose from, which can be ‘sent’ to the device and begin cooking according to the listed instructions. It’s also in the Dreo app where you can configure the ChefMaker’s display by allowing it to display the probe’s temperature when used to understand better how its cooking processes work.

The app itself is easy to navigate and it’s also simple to set the ChefMaker up by connecting it to your home Wi-Fi network and ensuring the appliance’s firmware is updated. Once that has progressed through, you’re then free to use the app as you wish.

Otherwise, this is a very simple appliance to use, be it as a conventional air fryer or with its clever probe cooking mode and its Chef Mode. The internals of the ChefMaker also house a light for keeping an eye on what’s cooking in the basket, while its basket and crisper plate are also dishwasher safe if you want to put them in there. For my testing, I hand-washed them and they were easy to clean. The probe also wiped clean with a damp cloth, as per Dreo’s comprehensive instructions.

Performance

• Chef Mode offered even performance and useful hands-free cooking
• Probe Cook mode arguably even more impressive
• Also works well as a more conventional air fryer

During my time with the ChefMaker, I cooked a wide variety of meat and vegetables of varying kinds and in different ways to best gauge how well it performs. A lot of my testing was based around its clever Chef Mode, which automatically adjusts cooking time based on what it’s cooking to offer the best results every time. Some types of food require the probe inside, so the ChefMaker knows when to cycle through its cooking stages, or the water tank to be filled at the top for spraying while it cooks.

For my first test, I used the Salmon Steak setting to cook three salmon fillets that had been marinated in lemon and Iime juice and topped with black pepper, inserting the probe into the middle of the one closest to the edge of the basket. With water in the tank, the ChefMaker mimics a sous vide style of cooking. It took 30 minutes for the three fillets to cook, and they came out perfectly with crispy skin and the expected blushing of the skin in the middle.

Dreo has also made a lot of how well the ChefMaker cooks steak, so for my next test, I chose the Sirloin Steak setting to cook three sirloin steaks, choosing both the recommended Sous Vide setting and choosing a Medium level of doneness.

The ChefMaker estimated 47 minutes for the three steaks, and it actually cooked in 42 minutes, with the estimate going down at a quicker rate than a real-time countdown. The steak was more on the medium rare side as opposed to being medium, and while it was melt-in-the-mouth steak, it proved the ChefMaker to be a little too conservative in its estimate.

I also tried the Chef Mode with two chicken breasts, choosing the respective Chicken Breast setting with Sous Vide flavour. For this, the ChefMaker estimated 25 minutes, and after that time, it wasn’t necessarily done to the required level.

To get them to the required temperature, I put them back on for 8 minutes at 195°C on the Air Fry setting, and the chicken was more evenly cooked and retained a lot of moisture, making for an excellent chicken breast.

The Chef Mode doesn’t always require the use of the probe however, as it can also cook a range of vegetables without the probe or needing to fill the water tank. A good example of this is the Broccoli setting, which cooked a fair portion of purple-topped broccolini in the ten minutes with crispy tops and tender stalks.

I also cooked small carrot chunks on the Carrot Chunks setting, and the 18-minute estimate passed with well-cooked carrots that were rather caramelised. Less time could have been better, but that’s me being picky.

For cooking chips on the Potato Chunks setting, I cut some potatoes into small cubes, patted the potatoes dry, seasoned them with paprika, and sprayed them with oil before cooking them. In the 20 minutes the ChefMaker took to cook, they came out fantastically well, with a fluffy centre and crispy outer.

It wasn’t all plain sailing on Chef Mode, however, as the green beans I cooked on their specific setting called for 17 minutes with water. In that time, the beans were especially browned and almost burnt in places, with some losing their flavour.

In some instances, the Chef Mode can be too conservative, and too aggressive in others, but it is, on the whole, a seriously impressive addition to an air fryer.

Perhaps even more impressive, however, was the Probe Cook mode, which made light work of both a salt-aged crackling pork loin joint and a lean beef roasting joint. The pork joint took 1 hour and 20 minutes to reach its 65-degree target temperature with a 180°C ambient temperature, where in an oven it would have taken closer to two hours. After an hour and 20 minutes, it came out with excellent crackling while also being tender and moist.

In the case of the beef, it cooked at 170°C to a 64°C target temperature, taking 1 hour and 13 minutes. That too came out tender and melted in a similar way to the steak cooked on the Chef Mode.

Moreover, I also used the Probe Cook mode to cook a ‘hot cross Chicken’, which essentially is a glazed chicken breast covered in a small amount of pastry. This was cooked according to Dreo’s guidance for chicken, which called for an internal temperature of 75°C and a 195°C ambient temperature.

While the chicken was moist after the 55 minutes it took to cook, the pastry was perhaps a little on the burnt side, and perhaps didn’t need as long. Nonetheless, it still cooked in two-thirds of the time it would have taken in an oven, and arguably cooked better.

For my final few tests, I turned my attention to the ChefMaker’s more conventional Classic Cook modes to see how well it operated as a more ‘standard’ air fryer. A natural first test was sausages, which cooked at 200°C for the usual 12 minutes. They came out piping hot and especially evenly cooked. As for some haddock goujons, they cooked on Air Fry for 10 minutes at 180°C and came out piping hot and wonderfully crispy.

Moving over to test the Roast function, I cooked some hasselback potatoes which had been parboiled beforehand for 10 minutes and sprayed with oil. They cooked in 15 minutes at 180°C and were fantastic – arguably being some of the best potatoes I’d cooked in an air fryer full stop.

I also used the Defrost setting for helping to speed up the process of defrosting a small beef joint, which took 30 minutes at 40 degrees. While it took time to get going, the Defrost function served its purpose in helping the meat along to defrost naturally, faster than if left out.

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