
Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
MSRP $399.95
“The Joule Oven app knows food higher than I do.”
Pros
- Cooks food evenly
- 13 cooking options
- Smart app that works seamlessly with oven
- Eliminates the necessity for multiple small appliances
Cons
- Bagel function doesn’t work quite right
We had our doubts once we heard the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro app helped cook the food it made, but then we tested it. So far as smart ovens go, the app gives it all of the brains it must cook and bake delicious meals. That said, the app can only achieve this much, and this oven, with its 13 cooking functions, must do many of the heavy lifting. We spent three months putting all those features to the test, and that is what we discovered.
Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro: compact and powerful
The Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro is a little bit greater than an ordinary toaster oven. The brushed stainless-steel oven measures 21.5 by 17.5 by 12.7 inches, so it can fit nicely on a counter and even under a cabinet with a little bit room to spare. But you’re giving up that area of the counter to suit the Joule. Inside, the oven is sort of spacious with its 1 cubic foot interior. You’ll be able to easily fit an entire chicken in there and roast it, air fry it, bake it, or slow cook it.
With 13 different functions, the Joule can handle every part you throw its way.
Speaking of the way to cook, the Joule has got you covered with 13 functions: toast, bagel, bake, air fry, broil, roast, pizza, cookies, proof, reheat, slow cook, keep warm, and dehydrate. It comes with many of the accessories you could reap the benefits of all those settings. Within the box, you’ll discover a 13-inch pizza pan, two oven racks, a broil rack/enamel roasting pan, and a mesh basket to be used with the air fryer and dehydrator. Each of those accessories slides easily into one in all the eight rack positions — there’s even room behind the oven to accommodate the curve of the pizza pan.
The designers wanted people to enjoy this Joule at its optimum performance, so that they made it insanely easy to make use of. The word intuitive doesn’t even apply since the LCD literally tells you where to put the rack or mesh basket based on each function. Here’s a stroke of genius: The wire rack is designed to rotate its position to suit into the numbered slots — on one side, it sits lower within the oven, and on the opposite, the food is a bit higher up. There are only three knobs and 6 buttons on the oven which might be below the sunshine blue backlit display.
You navigate the oven functions with the confirm/rotate button, adjust the temp/toast darkness with one in all the larger knobs, and time/what number of slices with the underside nob. The beginning/stop button is self-explanatory. For essentially the most part, those are the one controls you wish for operation. Nevertheless, the opposite buttons are to activate the sunshine, switch between convection and super convection, a bit more time, frozen food, and a favourite configuration .
Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro: super smart app
I’m not often a fan of apps for small appliances, mainly because they really don’t add to the experience. But when all smart home apps were just like the Joule Oven app, I’d be a convert. Along with featuring tons of tasty recipes from the Breville test kitchen, famous chefs, Recent York Times Cooking, America’s Test Kitchen, Williams Sonoma, Serious Eats, and more, it actually connects with the oven to assist in cooking. When you could step in and rotate a pan, you get an alert in your phone. The timer on the oven will pause whilst you make the rotation. You’d think all apps would work so seamlessly, but no.
Organising the app takes only a minute and is amazingly intuitive. It uses Bluetooth to seek out the oven after which connects to your Wi-Fi network. Consider carefully about what you’d wish to name your oven because that’s how it can appear on the alerts. You can too connect it to work with Google Assistant and Alexa, so as a substitute of telling the app to inform the oven to do something you may just ask Google or Alexa. Once arrange, there are countless recipes that range from making bread to air fryer chicken sandwiches to prosciutto, goat cheese, and fig pizza to cookies. You’ll be able to favorite recipes and think about which recipes you made and when. A few of them are basic, where you’ll have to set the oven yourself, and others are ChefSteps where the app works with the oven to cook the food. These are denoted with an airplane icon within the corner of the app image. While you make one in all those recipes, it truly is a set-it and forget-it cooking experience. You’ll receive notifications in your phone when you could do something or when cooking is complete. I appreciated that feature.
The recipes are straightforward and include a listing of ingredients, total time, lively time, serving amount, and skill level. Each step has a corresponding video, so if a cooking or baking term is recent, the app demonstrates it for you. As you’re employed through the recipe, when it’s time to cook or set a timer, the app tells you that, too. It even includes the rack to make use of within the oven. My favorite app feature is that your phone screen stays on while you’re making a recipe. You won’t ever need to make use of your sticky fingers to enter your phone’s passcode to return to the recipe.
I used the app recipes to make a ton of meals, and every part got here out pretty much and nothing was burned or undercooked.
I used the app recipes to make a ton of meals, and every part got here out pretty much and nothing was burned or undercooked. Essentially the most impressive thing I made was croissants. This recipe uses the ChefSteps, so when you roll the croissants and put them within the oven, they undergo the proofing process first, after which the app switches the oven to baking mode. They turned out perfect — flaky, buttery goodness.
You, too, could make delicious food with the Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
Perhaps the largest testament to the Joule’s versatility and power is that I didn’t turn my oven on once within the three months of testing, and I cook three to 4 times per week. I used to be capable of prepare every part within the Joule oven. For individuals who don’t need to activate an oven throughout the summer, consider this model as an alternate cooking solution. I did try a whole lot of the recipes within the app, cooked some frozen meals, baked croissants, toasted a bevy of breads, air-fried tasty tempura treats and potatoes, dehydrated zucchini, reheated leftovers, used the broil mode to grill prosciutto-wrapped halloumi, and kept a side dish warm while I finished one other a part of the meal on the stove. For essentially the most part, all of it turned out nearly perfectly.
The one real issue I had, and it was all user error, got here when roasting a turkey breast. Now, to be clear, I’ve never roasted anything before using a roast setting … I never had the choice. There wasn’t a turkey breast roasting recipe within the app. I made a decision to wing it, what could go fallacious? Well, roast and bake mode (especially in a convection oven) are two entirely various things. I put the turkey within the oven (it fit perfectly within the included roasting pan), chosen 350, and Roast for two.5 hours. After the primary hour, the highest of the turkey breast was beautiful — like something you’d see on the glossy pages of a food magazine. After the second hour, I sensed I probably must have taken it out sooner. Still beautiful, I cut into the turkey, to seek out the driest piece of meat I’ve ever seen — it principally shriveled up on itself. This little experiment made me come to depend on the Joule Oven app, because it really knows what it’s doing.
My only quibble was with the bagel function, which is alleged to crisp the inside the bagel while keeping the skin calmly toasted. I could never get the bagel function to work properly — the inside the bagel had an odd texture that wasn’t crisp or soft. Using the toasting function on a bagel did do the trick. I’ve seen quite just a few smart ovens with this feature and I’m unsure what the appeal is.
The Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro comes with a limited two-year warranty and costs about $400. At that price, it’s costlier than other smart ovens just like the Ninja Foodi Dual Heat Air Fry Oven, however the Breville’s cooking/baking functions are more in keeping with how people cook. Mix that functionality with an app stuffed with recipes that also facilitates caring for the time-sensitive details (let’s face it, can take a meal from magic to tragic), and the Breville, although costlier, is a better option for individuals who wish to cook.
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