Breville Smart Air Fryer Oven Cookbook: 250 Amazingly Crispy, Easy, Healthy, Fast & Fresh Recipes for your Breville Air Fryer Oven!Paperback– 19 November 2019
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I may change this review if I get clarification of my question which is: This cookbook is about the Breville Air Fryer, which I recently purchased. The Breville is both a Smart Oven and an Air Fryer. However, this cookbook makes no distinction between the two. For instance, most recipes call for heating the “Smart Oven”. Very few recipes are actually labeled “Air Fryer” and refer to heating the Air Fryer. So when the instructions say heat the Smart Oven does the author really mean using the Oven or the Air Fryer setting. They are two different things. Without this clarification I will certainly return this cookbook since it only has a handful of actual Air Fryer recipes. In addition, note that it is missing little things like temperature settings, example Parmesan Breaded Zucchini Chips on page 11, what is the temp? Last questions, who was the editor of this book?
1.0 out of 5 starsTerrible Book, Obviously Plagiarized
29 December 2019 - Published on Amazon.com
Verified Purchase
First of all, be advised that a lot of these recipes call for ingredients that are not reliable in high temp cooking. If you are an experienced cook, then it's easy to work around that, but if not, watch out. Further, the author uses recipes that are plainly copied from other "air fryer" books as she foolishly advises to "shake the handle of air fryer basket", or "thread ovals onto skewers and place on skewer rack in air fryer". Obviously, she has copied recipes meant for other appliances and tried to fob them off as her own for Breville. She also commonly advises fatty or oily foods to be cooked in the air fryer basket when the Breville owner's manual sharply warns to not allow grease to drip onto the specialize heating element of this oven, but instead to use the baking pan and rack. Worst of all, she advises lining the fryer basket with foil, which Breville warns against. Additionally, Ms. Dean is extremely inconsistent in how she conveys instructions using Air Fryer and Smart Oven interchangeably often without specifying whether she means the use of the air fry setting, or the air fryer basket, or simply the Air Fryer appliance. Unbelievably, she actually states that it's okay to stack items on top of each other rather than arranging in a single layer. In one instance she indicates that pork ribs can be cooked in 25 minutes. Yes. It's true they won't be raw in that time, but they won't be tender either. Skip this book. It's not worth the paper it's printed on. Shame on the editors at Breville for not reviewing her work.
Worst cookbook ever and does no justice to the fantastic Breville Smart Oven Air-Fryer. No where in the book does it tell you what setting (as example: Heat, Broil or AirFry) or rack level to use. Some recipes don’t tell you the temperature to set. Recipes continue to next page without notice. Some recipes do not make sense like the one for a type of eggplant parm. Here it says slice eggplant then cut 2 slices into cubes and heat before dealing with sliced eggplant. Strange that there is no publisher mentioned and no information about author available within internet.
Not only was the English bad, it was unclear what settings should be used on the oven for a recipe given. Looks like this was written in China by someone who does not understand English. I have never bought a cookbook like this. The only reason I am keeping it is because it is not worth returning at this price point.
I bought a Breville Smart Oven Air. I believe this cookbook is SUPPOSED to be written for a different mode, but still a Breville Smart Oven that is also an Air Fryer, albeit with fewer settings. So it should be close enough.
I wanted a cookbook that told me how to take advantage of the settings of the Breville, even if it is a slightly different model. This doesn't make any mention at all of the settings. It just has the temp and time.
And many of the directions make no sense. Here's an example from the Parmesan Breaded Zucchini Chips (which sounds pretty good, doesn't it): 5. Place the zucchini chips in the air fryer basket, but do not stack. 6. Pour into the Oven rack/basket. Place the Rack on the middle-shelf of the Smart Oven." Pour ... what? Into a basket with holes?
And the other thing is that all the recipes seem to be for an air fryer. This machine does so much more than just air fry, but there is not mention of anything else.
It really seems that this book was originally written for a single-purpose air fryer, and they tried to update for for the Breville Smart Oven but didn't do a very good job. Which is too bad.
I will keep it, because some of the recipes look pretty good (which is why I'm giving this a 2 instead of a 1). But this is NOT a Breville Smart Oven Air cookbook.