I watch HSN now #1 feat. Curtis Stone Dura-Electric 1700-Watt 22L Air Fryer Oven
Broil em, bake em, stick em in a baking pan
HSN and QVC are hotbeds for great entertainment. They’ve got the magic of infomercials without the eeriness of late night paid programming. Also, Lisa Rinna is a QVC regular and we love her. In this series I’ll be watching our favorite home shopping channels and answering the question of whether or not I’d buy whatever product(s) they’re selling.
I’m coming in a little bit late to the party, which happens to be HSN’s 43rd birthday celebration. Aussie chef Curtis Stone is live via Skype with Marlo, who I had to make sure wasn’t Marlo from the Real Housewives of Atlanta. It turns out she isn’t, I just like finding out when quasi-celebrities are multi-faceted.
Chef Curtis and Marlo are pushing his Dura-Electric 1700-Watt 22L Air Fryer Oven which has an obnoxiously long title that I both hate and love because it reminds me of my old job writing product copy that I also hated and loved. It bakes, broils, air fries, dehydrates, toasts, convection bakes, and can make rotisserie chicken. 7-in-1, or more, functions are one of those claims you want to believe but always feel is made up in one way or another. But Chef Curtis is here to prove that wrong because he is using every function of his oven in this show!
The first thing on the menu for the birthday party is BLT sandwiches. He pulls some bread out of the oven that was made with the toaster function and some broiled bacon. Two sandwiches are made and then stacked on top of each other to make an “unforgettable” double decker. But f*** a knife. Chef Curtis pulls out the Curtis Stone Cordless Electric Carving Knife(!) to cut the sandwich. It’s a lil’ sloppy, but I’m also not a BLT girl. We’ll pass on this one.
Next up is what I would call a loaded meatball marinara. He repeats the formula of toasting and broiling with the bread and meat. But this time he adds a mound of cheese to melt with the broiling function and pops the sandwiches back in the oven. In the meantime he shows off some fruit leather he made with the dehydrating function. Now, that, I can get behind. The meatball marinaras finish to a lot of ooo’s and ahhh’s and excitement and they look like this:
It is now that Marlo mentions that Chef Curtis has the highest selling brand on HSN. He was also a chef on The Biggest Loser! Again, love the multi-facetedness. It’s also here that Marlo starts plugging Chef Curtis’s other products like the Dura-Bake 3-pc. mini baking pans that he wipes clean with a possibly dry towel after removing food from the inside. The excuse is that the food comes out so cleanly you don’t have to wash the pans? Anyway, he starts demonstrating the air fryer function of the oven by making some panko-breaded chicken bites that are also sold on HSN and Marlo lets us know that HSN has a crazy extensive food selection. I love weird food things so I checked out HSN’s website and sure enough there are a s*** ton of gift sets and packaged foods you can buy and cook at home. Also, a lot of them are made by Chef Curtis. He’s got Italian sausages (also plugged by Marlo), grass fed Australian filet mignon, shrimp and scallop combo packs, and there are also little things like scone assortments and a rum cake gift set. Wild.
We’re headed toward the end of the show and Chef Curtis shows off his baking pans again with some convection baked nachos. At one point he also rotisseries a chicken with some potatoes, which was likely the best looking dish he served. These are the nachos he made, which may actually be one nacho.
He calls the nacho a sheet pan dinner, which, to me, is reminiscent of my girl Cathy Mitchell’s slow cooker dump meals.
Would I buy the Curtis Stone Dura-Electric 1700-Watt 22L Air Fryer Oven?
As someone who doesn’t cook, this 7-in-1 machine is something that could possibly work for me. Even though I’m not a fan of Chef Curtis’s food presentations, I bet you could make some fire meals in the air fryer oven. But even though I don’t cook, I love kitchen appliances. I am that person who will buy the pink pot and never use it. This means that I want a toaster, an air fryer, and a toaster oven and whatever other thing I want for my kitchen. So one thing that does everything doesn’t quite appeal to me. I will say, however, that I don’t think the $189 price tag is terrible for a product that can do so much (and Chef Curtis definitely proved that it does everything it’s supposed to). HSN also has flex payments, which is nice if you’re on a budget or don’t want to put down the full amount in one go. So while it’s a no from me, I honestly feel like it would’ve been closer to a yes if Chef Curtis made cuter food. And that’s the gospel truth.