Yes, you can make a roast dinner in an air fryer - this air fryer proves how

At last, it's roast dinner season. If you're anything like me, you'll have that love-hate relationship with roast dinners. I love to eat them, but I hate all the prep that comes before them. That's why, every Sunday I find myself asking "can I make a roast dinner in an air fryer?" or, at the very least, "can I cook roast potatoes in an air fryer?"

The answer to both questions is yes, you can. I made one of my speediest roast dinners in the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven, earning it a place in our buying guide for the best air fryers of all time.

So, if you want to know how I made my roast dinner in an air fryer, as well as what the Cuisinart is like to use, you're in the perfect place. Here's everything you need to know.

Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven review

Who would the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven suit?

There are three key factors that will decide whether this is for you. First of all is the capacity. This has 10.3L of space and three separate drawers for cooking in, which makes it perfect for family homes with lots of food that needs cooking at once. 10.3L is a huge amount of space in and of itself, but the fact that you can split it into three means you can cook a main and two sides, three components of a meal, or a starter, main, and desert at once. It’s perfect for big, busy homes.

The second element that has major appeal is the non-toxic coating. Whilst more brands are adopting non-sticks that don’t come with forever chemicals and harmful materials, they’re still tricky to find from reliable brands that offer reasonable prices. The Cuisinart is one of the few that you can really trust without needing to spend a fortune. I’m grateful to have it to add to our array of non-toxic air fryers.

This rather naturally brings me on to recommending the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven to those on a budget. As a balancing act of function, build, style, and safety, the Cuisinart scores top marks. It’s a really exceptional model.

Unboxing the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven

The Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven arrives in a big box, which should come as no surprise, because this is a very large air fryer. That being said, it’s not excessively large nor is it over-packaged. In an ideal world, I would have loved not to have the non-recyclable elements of the packaging: there were a few soft plastic bags around the accessories. However, they kept the air fryer in great condition and I can’t complain about that.

Cuisinart sends an instruction manual as well as lots of recipe suggestions for what to make. It’s great if you need a helping hand getting started, but I already had an agenda of goods that I wanted to get cooking. So, after a rinse and wipe down, I made a start.

What is the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven like to use?

TheCuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven had a menu of helpful pre-sets. Some brands feel the need to pack their air fryer with wild and wacky functions and others pare it down to the basics. For me, this strikes the perfect balance. It covers the basics - air frying, baking, roasting, grilling, and reheating - and then throws in a toast function as well as pizza, dehydrating, and a manual setting too.

The screen is sensitive and clear, so you won’t need your reading glasses. You have the option to set each drawer specifically or to synchronise them all. The only difference is that the bottom tray is designed specifically for pizza, reheating, and manual settings, so it’s not as appropriate for air frying, for example.

There’s a light icon that’ll let you through the window of each drawer, a very handy extra when you’re adjusting to how this cooks. It automatically turns off after ten seconds to save you energy too. All in all, this is a really intuitive and clear air fryer to use. I actually didn’t even need to consult the instruction manual, which is great.

We’ll get to how I made a roast dinner in here in a little while, but before I could get into the big, bold bakes, I made some more simple recipes that help me to gauge what the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven is like compared to other models.

The roast dinner test

I’ve thrown my normal formula for reviews out the window here. You’ll still get all my standard tests further down, but let’s answer the question on everyone’s minds: can you make a roast dinner in an air fryer?

With three drawers, I think the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven gives you the best chance and cooking vegetables, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, and chicken at once, to perfection. But did it?

Let’s go through everything one by one.

First up, and arguably the most important element, is the roast potatoes. After extensively researching how to make roast potatoes in an air fryer, I found the formula. Peel, chop, and boil the potatoes as you would for roasties. I tossed mine in flour and oil, pre-heated the top drawer of the air fryer and the bottom tray and split my roast potatoes between the two. They had twenty minutes at 180 before I transferred them all to the bottom tray to cook alongside my Yorkshire puddings, for 15 minutes at 180 degrees.

Whilst they were cooking in the bottom, I placed my stuffed chicken joint in the top drawer with seasoned carrots in the other. These both cooked at 180, the chicken on air fry and the carrots on roast, for fifteen minutes. It was a logistical mission, but I think it worked out. Once the potatoes were sorted, I had twenty minutes to boil peas and make my gravy. Of course, I don’t need that long. I had time to pour a glass of wine and get a few chapters deep into my current book before I was reminded of my roast dinner challenge - a refreshing change from a sweaty Sunday juggling all sorts of trays and dishes.

As you can see from my platter, this was an impressive roast dinner. I’ll allow myself the boast, because two of us totally devoured this for lunch. Normally, there are some leftovers somewhere, but not this time. It was a smash hit. The carrots were tender and a little sweet, with some beautiful charring. The chicken was succulent, with a beautifully crispy skin; and my roast potatoes were perfect. With the Yorkshires thrown in, it felt like a carvery (in the best way).

Test 1: chips

Air fryers and chips go together like, well fish and chips, which is why this is arguably the most important test that I run on all air fryers. I was testing these chips as part of a meal, so I used the left hand drawer to cook 500g from frozen.

At first, I thought 500g sounded a little ambitious, but it looked reasonable in the spacious drawers. I used the air fryer setting (230 degrees for 25 minutes) and checked on the chips half way through the cook when I got a ‘shake’ notification from the air fryer.

At 14 minutes they looked good, but pale. Gripping onto the comfortable handle, I tossed them around in the basket according to Cuisinart’s instructions and placed the basket back in the air fryer.

At the full 25 minutes, the chips looked perfect - and they tasted it too. They had the perfect crisp and bite with some fluffiness in the middle. I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to chips in general, but these are some of the best I’ve had in a while.

Test 2: fish fingers

My pairing for the perfect chips is always fish fingers. These are cooked from frozen, so they’re a great test of the Cuisinart’s speed and power. They’re also a classic combination: who doesn’t love fish fingers and chips for dinner?

I had these synchronised to my chip setting, which happens to be the default air fry setting: 230 degrees for 25 minutes. However, at the half way shake point, I thought they looked darker than they needed to be when half way through their cook. With that in mind, I tweaked the timer on my fish finger side of the air fryer and took them out at 20 minutes. For me, they could have actually had even less time, because they’re definitely on the crispier side. However, they were still surprisingly moist and cooked right through, so I can’t complain at all.

Test 3: grilled vegetables

Now, there’s a special pizza re-heating setting and a silver pizza tray that’s designed to deliver a crispy base with doughy crusts. As a bit of a pizza snob, I’ll admit that I was apprehensive that this would make a good pizza on Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven of being able to reheat my leftover slices (a standard test that I run), but the Cuisinart more than delivered.

At the same time that I was cooking fish and chips, I also had a pizza on the go. I was thinking about how useful this would be when it comes to cooking a garlic pizza with lasagne and vegetables, for example and it’s made me wonder why no other brands have really nailed the three-drawer air fryer yet.

The Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven is more than capable of serving up a pizza that scores top marks. In 20 minutes, which is on the longer side for air fryers, my pizza was crispy and golden in all the right places and soft and doughy exactly where it should be - it was nothing short of a great success.

When it came to reheating a slice (one which it took all my willpower to leave and defend from the family members), the Cuisinart didn’t fail to deliver. This takes a slightly different type of skill to normal air frying: you have to be gentle and slower with heat, but the Cuisinart did a fantastic job. The base, which had gone a little soggy, regained all its structure and the cheese was stringy again, but without any of the mushrooms or peppers drying out. That’s a great win in my book.

Test 4: cookies

I have a sweet tooth and I was real intrigued to keep testing the bottom tray of the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven, which makes the perfect recipe for a cookie test. These turned out a little differently to my normal recipe and I think the Cuisinart may have been a little too cold when I started baking them, which is why they’ve spread a little more and also why they’re on the bubbly side.

They still tasted great, with chewy edges and soft middles, but I was a little disappointed with how they looked. I’m putting this down to a lack of pre-heat, which is my fault. Some air fryers are good to go as soon as they’re turned on, but the Cuisinart may need a couple of minutes to warm up first. It’s still quicker than an oven and cooked my second batch perfectly.

Cleaning the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven

The beauty of the Cuisinart is that it’s both non-toxic and easy to clean. The drawers are dishwasher safe, which is a dream for anyone in a post roast slump, but I gave them a quick clean in the sink, because I like to preserve the lining as best as I can and I think avoiding the dishwasher with things like this is always good.

The one place I always look when I’m cleaning air fryer drawers is at the windows. These are really hard to clean and dry without getting steam, water, or crumbs stuck in the way. However, the Cuisinart came out as clear as it was when I first opened it up. It’s a brilliant result.

How does the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven compare?

There aren’t any other air fryers that offer three drawers of capacity, so it’s difficult to pluck out a model for direct comparison. However, if you’re looking for a large air fryer that’s both non-toxic and capable of cooking a roast dinner, my bet would be on the Cosori Turbo Tower or the Ninja Foodi.

The Cosori Turbo Tower also uses an impressive ceramic non-stick and it boasts 10.8L capacity, which is really similar to this one. The Cosori works with a deeper drawer and then a shallow tip tray. It does come with an extra tray accessory that effectively gives you three layers to pile your food on, so you could cook a roast dinner on it. I’d say it’s actually quicker than the Cuisinart on the tasks and didn’t seem to need that extra nudge for pre-heating. However, you don’t have the same opportunity to split the functions into three, so it’s a little less versatile than the Cuisinart.

The Ninja Foodi makes no pretence of stacking or packing drawers in, on the other hand. It boasts two, large drawers. You could definitely cook a roast chicken in one of the drawers and do you roast potatoes in the other. Of course, you lose the option to add anything else, but you gain a lot of space and depth. Perhaps the greatest appeal of all is the price. This is significantly cheaper then the other two and ninja is famous for making some of the best air fryers of all time, with this one very much at the forefront. It’s a seriously impressive model.

Should you buy the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer & Oven?

If you’re looking for a big air fryer that boasts close to bottomless capacity, look no further. This did a fantastic job of both the smaller, simpler tasks that I set it as well as the bigger feats (roast dinners, I’m looking at you)