Smeg COF01 10 in 1 Multifunction Countertop Oven with Steam & Air Fry Review

Verdict

The Smeg COF01 10 in 1 Multifunction Countertop Oven with Steam & Air Fry provides a classy and stylish oven with a big cooking capacity, excellent results and some useful functions. However, its preheat time is extensive, it isn’t the easiest to use against the competition, and it’s very expensive.

Introduction

The Smeg COF01 10 in 1 Multifunction Countertop Oven with Steam & Air Fry represents a stylish and premium entry into the burgeoning air fryer sector.

A lot of big brands have gotten in on the act, but I don’t think I’ve seen one with quite so much class and timelessness in terms of looks, let alone a big 30-litre capacity and diverse set of functions including a grill, steamer, and convection oven.

All of that comes at a price, as it usually does with Smeg. The COF01 clocks in at £849.95/$999, which makes it heinously expensive against some of the best air fryers and similar appliances we’ve tested such as the Ninja Combi 12-In-1 Multi-Cooker & Oven SFP700UK and Dreo ChefMaker. In fact, Smeg’s oven is so expensive than you could easily purchase those two appliances, and still have a few hundred pounds left over.

Design and Features

• Typically retro-inspired looks
• Takes up a lot of countertop space
• Helpful amount of functions

There’s no denying that the Smeg COF01 looks fantastic, with the classic mid-century design that the brand has become associated with on everything from fridges to kettles, toasters and now, countertop ovens. A lot of that is down to its simplistic front panel with a couple of function dials, small control panel, and large Smeg lettering on the bottom side of the oven door. It nonetheless looks excellent.

With this in mind, it is an absolute behemoth of an appliance, not only because of its 30-litre capacity, but due to its 500x500x400 mm dimensions. Those mean it takes up a lot of space on my counter, and if you’re like me and have a smaller kitchen where counter space is valuable, you are sacrificing a fair bit of it for the beauty of the Smeg COF01.

The 30 litre internal capacity makes it especially large, and ideal for cooking a lot of food in at once, as you would a more conventional oven. In fact, that capacity essentially makes it as large as some top ovens/grills in a more conventional double oven.

Controlling the Smeg COF01 isn’t as easy as you might think, even in spite of the digital display between the two control dials. With the likes of the Dreo Chefmaker, it spells out the functions and what you need to do with clear lettering. By comparison, Smeg’s oven utilises a lot of symbols to denote its different cooking functions, which makes both its manual and quick start guide a must-have when using the COF01.

With this in mind, it comes with an extensive list of functions, ranging from use as a more typical oven with fan settings to a grill, steamer and air fryer. Much like the ChefMaker, it also comes with a built-in water tank for steaming items, as well as 33 different presets for auto-cooking a range of food on the COF01’s ‘Chef Menu’. These include everything from sausages to broccoli, and even an option for proving dough.

When selecting one of the ‘Chef Menu’ options, you can also select food by weight, and it spits out a preset time. In addition, there is a full minutes and seconds readout for a timer when set, although you do have to go through a couple of different sets to even set a timer on modes where they don’t come up by default, such as on any of its steam functions.

As for accessories, Smeg bundles a wire rack for use with its grill mode, as well as a standard bake tray and a handy perforated tray for use with the steam and air fry modes. It’ll go up to a maximum temperature of 230°C on modes such as grill and air fry for extra-crispy cooking, while there is a preheat for virtually every mode which adds a fair bit of time to your overall cooking.

Performance

• Mostly excellent results, as long as you’re patient
• Versatile with a handy list of functions
• Long preheat times

In my few weeks with the Smeg COF01, I cooked a range of meat, fish and veg, as well as more food besides, to best understand how well it cooks across its different modes. If you give it its time to cook items and you’re patient with it, it’s fantastic, as you would your normal oven.

With this in mind, my first test was to cook some haddock kievs at 200°C for 18 minutes. They cooked within that time, and came out especially crispy. It’s a fair bit quicker than a conventional oven, although slightly behind other air fryers I’ve used. Some oven chips took 20 minutes at 210°C to cook, and they were well browned.

In moving over to try the Chef Mode, I assumed a safe bet would be some pork sausages. With the weight set at 400g, the COF01 took 25 minutes to cook them, alongside a seven-and-a-half minute preheat. As lovely as the sausages were, that’s as long as to cook them in a conventional oven.

One of the best things I did in the COF01 was some salmon fillets marinated in lemon and lime juice with black pepper, which were cooked on the oven’s Fan Grill & Steam mode at 180°C with 45 percent steam. This required the water tank to be filled up, and resulted in salmon that was well-browned with a crispy skin that retained a lot of moisture and flavour after 20 minutes or so. It’s probably some of the best salmon I’ve cooked.

In moving over to try some garlic bread, it cooked well in just 10 minutes at 200°C on the fan-assisted oven mode, while some home-made garlic knots with pizza dough on bottom fan assist baked well in 15 minutes at 200°C with garlic butter over them. The problem here was the 15 minute preheat that the COF01 took with these garlic knots, essentially doubling their cooking time.

As for some hasselback potatoes, which were simply prepared by being cut into, these were cooked on the Fan Grill & Steam mode at 220°C for 30 minutes with 60 percent steam. It essentially provided wonderfully roasted hasselbacks in half an hour with no need for par-boiling.

I also tried a packet mix of American cheddar ‘biscuits’ using the fan-assisted mode, which took 15 minutes at 220°C, and resulted in biscuits that were well-browned and extremely well risen.

Defrosting three large pork loin steaks was less successful however, as even after 90 minutes, they still were frozen. Cooking them on the dedicated pork setting on the COF01’s Chef Menu was much better, as 900g cooked in just half an hour where the oven estimated a 51 minute cook time.

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