No matter how well you care for them, Actifry™ paddles won’t last forever.

Even if they were never dropped, ever, or ever put through a dishwasher (even though they are dishwasher safe), eventually the “plastic” material that the paddles are made of loses its integrity — probably simply through constantly being baked at extreme high temperatures inside the machine.

Above is a Family Size machine paddle that broke while roasting a batch of potatoes (the same batch pictured, coincidentally.) Thankfully, it appears to have happened at the very end so the potatoes were cooked!

The machine had had at this point 28 months of use 2 or 3 times a week.

You can see that the plastic just “lost integrity” and cracked at the place where the paddle joins onto the centre spindle.

It’s easy enough to order a new paddle, and they are inexpensive. I’ve listed how to approach getting Actifry spare parts where you are.

If a paddle breaks because you dropped in onto a concrete or hard tile floor, well, there you go. You know why it broke and you can see where all the bits are.

Otherwise, though, it’s not going to break just sitting unused in the machine is it? No. Chances are that it will break in use, while you are cooking something.

This means obviously that small bits of paddle plastic could get in your food.

You are probably best to discard the food.

When our Family Size paddle broke, it broke into two large pieces plus one very small piece that splintered off — which is that small chip of plastic in the middle.

That small chip could have been dangerous if someone tried to swallow it.

So I would say discard the food, as much as it pains me to say so and do it. It’s not worth the risk.

Note: breakage issues were common with paddles on the first Actifrys to come to market in 2007, but a redesign corrected that.

* Actifry™ is a registered trademark of SEB, France.