Cosori 6.4L Dual Blaze Smart Air Fryer Review: Two elements boost

Verdict

The Cosori 6.4L Dual Blaze Smart Air Fryer is a brilliant air fryer that cooks food remarkably consistently with its two elements. It’s a standout appliance with a large basket and lots of different functions for cooking a variety of different food, and while it may be a little boxy in appearance, it’s an impressive air fryer for its relatively high price.

Introduction

A problem that air fryers sometimes face is their uneven cooking, given their use of only one element and a fan for circulating that air around. More conventional means of cooking, such as an oven, feature two elements.

However, what if you could get an air fryer with two elements? That’s where the Cosori 6.4L Dual Blaze Smart Air Fryer comes in, a premium option from a brand that wowed me at the back end of last year with its speedy 6L Turbo Blaze model.

Coming in at £179.99/$179.99, this is one of the more expensive air fryers, and those two elements may well help to power this along to be one of the best air fryers available.

Design and features

• Large, boxy shape
• Bigger cooking capacity
• Easy to use with lots of different functions

Make no mistake, the Cosori 6.4L Dual Blaze Smart Air Fryer carries quite a commanding presence when placed on my kitchen worktop. It’s over a foot tall and is a lot boxier and squarer than the sleek curves of the Turbo Blaze’s chassis. I don’t mind the boxier shape, but it isn’t the nicest-looking appliance in Cosori’s lineup, or as good looking as similarly priced options from competitors.

That big stature does have a key advantage, however. The Dual Blaze features a massive 6.4-litre basket, which makes it one of the bigger single-zone air fryers out there, giving you lots of room for cooking food for a small to medium-sized family. It’ll comfortably fit everything from chicken and chips in one go for a quick weeknight meal, or a pair of reasonably sized meat joints for your Sunday roast. You’ll also find the inside of the Dual Blaze to be home to its two cooking elements, one at the top and one at the bottom.

Inside the basket is a solid crisper plate, which has lots of holes for excellent air circulation to cook your food evenly, while it’s also easy to move around and won’t scrape against the non-stick coating on the basket with rubberised edges. The lack of a handle, unlike the Turbo Blaze, means it can be a little finicky to get in and out at first, but once you get used to it, it’s no problem.

Speaking of handles, the one present on the outside of the basket is the same as the Turbo Blaze, but it lacks the button that locks it into place. Admittedly, it seems the button handle is a rarer feature on air fryers in general, but it would have been nice to see it on the Dual Blaze, too, for added peace of mind. Around the back of the chassis, there is a larger exhaust for steam and smoke.

The control panel is present on the front-angled piece above the face of the Dual Blaze, and seems quite small relative to the size of the appliance. It’s easy to use, with a white backlight beneath the lettering, making it especially legible. Handily, the presets are split into two categories on the control panel, The left-hand side offers presets for different types of food including Chicken, Fries and Steak, while the right-hand side is for dedicated cooking modes such as Air Fry, Roast and Bake. There are 12 in total, giving you lots of convenient options.

Using the Dual Blaze is as easy as other Cosori air fryers. Simply hit a preset or cooking mode, and it presents a preset time and temperature. You can adjust them easily by pressing the arrows up or down, as well as changing time minute-by-minute and temperature in five-degree increments for extra precise control.

The readout for time displays mostly in minutes, apart from in the final minute, where it gives you a countdown timer in seconds, which is handy and the same as the Turbo Blaze. Once your food is done, the alarm noise is similar to an oven with a reasonably shrill noise, although it could be louder to get your attention.

As well as using the control panel atop the Dual Blaze, this air fryer can also be controlled by the VeSync app. This is the reason that it’s labelled as a ‘Smart’ air fryer, although there are limits to its powers. The app provides access to personalised recipes based on which appliance you have, which go far beyond the included recipe book, although that’s not the most interesting thing it does.

With the VeSync app, you can set cooking modes, a time and temperature for your cooking and get it ready to go, but you can’t actually start the cooking process. For that, you have to physically press the Play/Pause button on the control panel, due to EU legislation that is cited in the app.

It works well enough and gives you a handy readout of when your food is expected to finish cooking and what function, time, and temperature you’ve chosen. Once your food is done, it also reminds you to clean the basket and crisper plate – this can either be done in a dishwasher or manually.

Before you get to that process, however, you have to pair your air fryer to the app. This is easy, as you hold the power button down for five seconds to put the Dual Blaze into Wi-Fi mode. Then, open the VeSync app and enable Bluetooth. It then searches for your devices, connects to Wi-Fi and it’s done. The process is simple, although it doesn’t make much sense to me why this air fryer needs app control.

Performance

• Remarkably consistent cooking with two elements
• Equally impressive across a variety of different food
• Lower top-end temperature isn’t an issue

The Cosori 6.4L Dual Blaze Smart Air Fryer got a lot of time for cooking items over my month or so of usage, and I even went as far as using it to cook a range of items on Christmas Day, and it helped speed up the process entirely on what was a busy day.

For a perhaps quite unorthodox first test, I cooked a pair of joints of meat to give the Roast test a go – a Parmesan-crusted beef joint and a gammon joint. Both cooked in 28 minutes at 190°C and were not dried out, and tasted excellent. The presence of the two elements helped with even cooking and also halved the cooking time compared to the recommended oven settings.

I then proceeded to cook a fair portion of breaded chicken for three people on the Air Fry setting for 15 minutes. It turned out crispy and piping hot, without any need for turning. In cooking a range of assorted supermarket party food that filled the basket (halloumi bites, mini chicken kievs and cheese fondue bites), these cooked at 190°C for 9 minutes and were evenly cooked. They did take some time to begin cooking, however.

I also cooked a selection of party food meat pies and mini beef wellingtons at 200°C for 12 minutes, and they were especially well cooked inside and out, with no soggy base in half the time that they would have been if they were oven cooked.

In moving over to using the dedicated food presets, I cooked three salmon fillets that had been marinated in lemon and lime juice and had a sprinkling of black pepper for a risotto on the seafood preset, which called for eight minutes at 190°C.

As these were slightly frozen, I upped the temperature to 200°C and added a total of another 4 minutes. The salmon cooked wonderfully and evenly after some turning and cooked in a shorter amount of time than the trusty Ninja AF400UK I usually use.

Perhaps the best item I cooked in the Dual Blaze was a larger peppercorn-crusted wagyu picanha cut of meat. It was a slight faff in getting the meat to temperature, being cooked for 15 minutes on the Roast setting at the Dual Blaze’s highest temperature of 205°C, before dropping the temperature down to 160°C for a further 20 minutes, and then blasting it at 180°C for another eight minutes to get the meat to cook.

These times were adjusted from the much longer oven timings, and after a ten-minute rest at room temperature, I’m not hesitant in saying it was some of the best meat I’ve ever had, being tender, juicy and full of flavour and medium-rare.

For a Christmas Day test, the Dual Blaze came in wonderfully handy for cooking both carrots and brussel sprouts. The carrots were par-boiled first, while the sprouts were simply dropped into the basket, and both were cooked at 200°C on Air Fry for 13 minutes.

The carrots came out rich in flavour and al dente, while the sprouts had some slight charring on the outside and retained a lot more flavour than if they had been boiled.

Cooking some home-made sausage rolls using a puff pastry sheet and pork sausage meat with cranberries was also equally rewarding, with two larger rolls cooking on Air Fry in 13 minutes at 200°C. A couple of days later, I also reheated them using the Dual Blaze’s dedicated reheat mode, which was handy for giving them some needed heat to be served warm.

To give a couple of the other settings a go, I cooked some small mushrooms on the Veggies preset (195°C for 6 minutes) and some fries on the Fries preset (195°C, 20 minutes) to go alongside some steak. The mushrooms cooked rather well and had a lot of flavour, while the fries were well cooked and crispy on the outside and warm and fluffy on the inside, and were shaken a few times during cooking.

For one final test, I used the broil setting, which equates to a grill here in the UK, to do a ham, cheese and tomato toastie. Usually, I’d use my trusty George Foreman grill for this, and while the output in the Dual Blaze lacked the compression and grill markings on the bread, it did wonderfully at 205°C for five minutes. The bread was well-toasted and had a crunch to it, while the cheese was melted, and the other contents were warmed right through.

When cooking, the Dual Blaze isn’t overly loud, but it isn’t whisper-quiet like the Turbo Blaze is. The maximum temperature is only 205°C, which may be limiting if you want super crispy food, as the Turbo Blaze can go up to 230°C, while some of Ninja’s appliances can go to 240°C on their dedicated ‘Max Crisp’ mode.

As much as it may seem limiting however, the presence of two elements almost negates the need for higher temperatures, resulting in even and crispy cooking whenever you need it.

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