ProCook air fryer health grill review

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Cons

Our Verdict

This is one of the best multifunctional air fryers we’ve tested. It has more cooking methods than most rivals and it does almost everything to a very high standard. It’s powerful as well, and produces great food.

Price When Reviewed

Not available in the US

ProCook is a UK-based kitchenware brand that has recently expanded its electrical appliances range to include air fryers, food mixers, blenders and more.

Its stylish air fryer health grill can, of course, air fry – but it can also do a whole lot more. Find out if it’s the right buy for you in our full review.

Design & Build

The ProCook air fryer health grill is larger than it looks in pictures. It’s a big, clamshell-shaped appliance, measuring 40 x 40 x 28cm. You’ll need plenty of counter space to stand it – and if you place it close to the wall, you’ll need to pull it forwards to open the lid when you want to use it. Its height won’t be a problem, though: it can easily open under standard kitchen cabinets.

It has a high-quality build of stainless steel and plastic, and its curved shape makes it an attractive countertop addition – a good thing because at 10kg, you won’t want to move it once you’ve found a spot for it.

Like most multi-cookers, it comes with a set of accessories to transform the way you use it. It has a cooking pot with half-ridged base for griddling, a crisper basket, a grill rack and glass lid. The pot and basket have a non-stick finish and all the accessories are well made and dishwasher-safe. ProCook even throws in a cleaning brush. Still, there’s nowhere in or on the appliance to store the extras, so you’ll need to house them in a cupboard.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The health grill has a digital display and dial and button operation. It has 12 cooking functions in all: air fry, roast, broil, bake, dehydrate, slow cook, griddle, stew, steam, keep warm, grill and preheat. The controls are easy to use as well: use the dial to select a cooking method, then adjust the time and temperature as needed. Many of the cooking methods have an automatic preheat at the start but it’s easy to switch off if you want. There’s also a manual mode.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

One thing you may have noticed is that, although this appliance isn’t sold in the US, it does – very oddly – use US cooking terminology. Plenty of people in the UK won’t be familiar with the words griddle and broil, so clearer instructions on how to use these settings would be welcome.

Just as a guide, broiling is a lot like grilling, with intense heat cooking food from above – although the ProCook also has a separate grill function. Griddling uses heat from above and below.

Most multi-cookers either specialise in dry (air frying, roasting, grilling) or wet cooking (stewing, slow cooking, steaming), but you can make almost anything in the ProCook air fryer grill, using any cooking method possible. Its main limitation is its size and shape: you won’t get an entire pizza in there, for example. But that’s true of most air fryers.

There’s also a clear focus on fresh food and cooking from scratch; there’s no defrosting mode, for example. There’s also no shake/turn alert midway through a cooking programme. But the alerts you do get are at a good volume: unlike some rivals, they’re not ear-splittingly loud.

Features & Performance

One of the very few issues with the ProCook is the fact that it only comes with a flimsy leaflet to tell you how to use it. There’s more help on the ProCook website, where some recipes are hidden under the appliance’s product information, but it’s unlikely you’d think to look there, or remember where to find it when cooking.

The lack of information provided means you’ll need to decide which accessory to use with each cooking method (not difficult) but also figure out the best cooking time and temperature (more challenging).

The ProCook air fryer grill seems to be more efficient than many other models and when I started using it, I routinely overcooked everything, turning all kinds of food into dried-out pellets.

If you’ve been using a standard air fryer, the first thing I’d suggest is turning off the preheat function when you’re air frying – or cutting down your cooking time by at least five minutes.

But once you’ve got the hang of cooking in the health grill, I think you’ll be impressed. The cooking pot has a large 33 x 22cm cooking area, which gives plenty of space for a roast joint of meat, a family-sized portion of roast potatoes, a stew, a grilled breakfast or a heaped pile of chips.

There’s not enough space to cook an entire dinner for a larger family. However, for singles, couples or young families, it’s one of the best air fryer multi-cookers I’ve tested. It’s just so versatile. You could cook a different type of dinner in it every night of the week and never have to resort to your oven.

One of the first tests was roasting a cut of beef – and, being an early test, I slightly overcooked it. If you want to regularly roast or broil meat, you’ll need to invest in a meat probe. The ProCook air fryer grill doesn’t come with one – unlike similar Ninja appliances, such as its health grill and its latest dual-drawer air fryer.

I also made a stew. Using the griddle function, I was able to brown the onions in the cooking pot, although as the lid must be closed during cooking, it wasn’t as easy to stir them as on a hob. Still, they cooked evenly and quickly.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

I then changed the cooking mode, set it for an hour, added the rest of the stew ingredients and placed the glass lid on top. It was slow to simmer and didn’t ever seem to reach the bubbling temperature you’d quickly get on a hob. But it cooked perfectly and was surprisingly delicious and flavoursome – even though I’d pulled it together from whatever ingredients I could scavenge from the fridge.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Although stews cook well, sauces would probably not. This is partly due to the wide, flat shape of the cooking pot, which creates too much surface area for cooking lower volumes, and partly because of the cooking pot’s half-ridged base, which isn’t ideal for stirring a consistent sauce.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

But really, it’s nit-picking to talk about the one thing it can’t do, when it does so many other things so well: roasting, stewing, steaming, slow cooking.

And of course, the main event. Not all air fryers are created equal and some fail to crisp well. Not so the ProCook which makes reliably crunchy food: skin-on chips made fresh from sliced potatoes cooked quickly and came out with cloud-fluffy insides and crispy skin.

And when you’ve finished cooking, it’s easy to clean as well. The heat coil is covered by a splatter guard, which you can just pop off and clean, and all the accessories can be dumped in the dishwasher – although for longevity, we’d recommend using the included brush for a gentle clean.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Price & Availability

The ProCook air fryer health grill is only available from ProCook in the UK. It’s not available in the US. It’s priced at £179, which makes it good value for its quality and feature set. It’s the same price as Ninja’s Health Food Grill, which has a similar high-quality build and cooking area but fewer cooking modes.

You can see all the Ninja air fryers we’ve tested in our Ninja round-up. But for more options across all brands, have a look at our round-up of the best air fryers we’ve tested. And for maximum cooking space, see the best air fryer ovens.

Should you buy the ProCook air fryer health grill?

If you live alone, in a couple, or have a young family, this is one of the best air fryers you can buy. It ticks so many boxes in terms of ease of use and versatility and most importantly, produces really good food.