The 12 Best Deals on Air Fryers of 2023

FAQs

How do you use an air fryer?

Pretty much the same way you use a toaster oven: Set the temperature, put food in, close the door, and let it cook for the recommended time. (Depending on the particular recipe and your particular model of fryer, you may need to preheat first.) Air fryer baskets and racks are generally made with lots of perforations or a mesh texture, which allows for good air circulation and doesn’t trap moisture. The major difference from baking in a traditional oven is that you need to leave lots of room between food items; if the air fryer is overfilled, you won’t get good crispy results. Shaking the basket periodically during cooking can help keep individual items from sticking together, but if there’s too much stuff in there, you just won’t get perfect results.

How does an air fryer work?

The secret behind deep frying is submerging food in hot oil: Oil is a really good conductor of heat, which makes things cook at the rapid speed needed for good crunch, while being completely surrounded by oil heats the food evenly from all sides at once. Air fryers use a (typically electric-powered) heating element to rapidly heat the air in the cooking chamber and then imitate the thermodynamics of deep frying by using a fan to circulate the hot air and cook the food much more evenly than a traditional oven. It’s sort of like a small but mighty convection oven.

How much should I pay for an air fryer?

It depends on how and how much you plan to use it! To feed a large family including big fans of crispy, crunchy foods, you’ll need a high-end model with lots of power and a large capacity. The absolute best air fryers sell for $200 or more, but that high price gets you an array of useful extras and design features in addition to impressive performance. If you’ll only be making an occasional batch of french fries or just want to experiment using an air fryer as a beginner—or if you’re only feeding one or two and don’t need a high-capacity machine—you can get away with a smaller, cheaper air fryer. There are great air fryers for less than $100 out there, though they’ll be smaller and offer fewer features. Is an air fryer worth it at all? Assuming you’ll actually use the thing, yes. An air fryer can absolutely make crispy foods that are as good as “real” deep-fried ones, but even a compact air fryer will take up counter space, and the cost for a good air fryer might not be worth it if you only ever use it once or twice.

What materials are safe to use in an air fryer?

Can you put foil in an air fryer? Yes. Can you put parchment paper in an air fryer? Yes. Can you put glass in an air fryer? Yes, if it’s oven-safe. The general rule with using dishware and other materials in an air fryer is if it’s oven-safe, it should also be air fryer-safe. (That said, check your individual air fryer’s manual to make sure it doesn’t have any additional rules.) One material that should definitely not go in an air fryer is paper towels. Parchment paper has a special heat-proof coating to make it oven-safe; paper towels (and wax paper, which is also not heat-proof) can easily catch fire at frying temperatures.

What are some good air fryer recipes for beginners?

A great way to get acquainted with the air fryer’s powers is using it on some vegetables. Simply prep the veggies, season with salt, spices, and a little bit of oil, and air fry until done. Green beans, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and potatoes are all great candidates for this treatment. Cooking bacon in an air fryer is also incredibly easy, as long as you make sure to pour off some grease between batches. For a simple introduction to air frying chicken, try our simple air fryer Buffalo wings recipe, which gets tasty, crunchy wings from a simple mix of spices and nothing else.

What can’t you cook in an air fryer?

To fans, the air fryer is a miracle machine that can make anything. That’s…almost right, but there are a few items that don’t work well or are downright unsafe. Don’t cook any of these in an air fryer:

• Wet-battered food. An air fryer can do a great job with fried chicken and other items with a layer of dry breading, but keep drippy batters out of the air fryer. A liquid coating won’t stick to the food long enough to cook, so you’ll end up with half-battered items and a pile of burnt batter at the bottom of the machine.
• Heavily oiled food. A little bit of cooking oil can help an air fryer get food extra-crispy, but if it’s coated with so much that it might drip during cooking, you could end up with smoking oil and a charred taste in everything inside the machine.
• Fresh spinach. Spinach shrinks down so much when it cooks that any attempt to make crunchy spinach chips will end in burning. Use a sturdier green, like kale or Brussels sprouts, instead.
• Popcorn. Air fryers just can’t get to a high enough temperature to pop the kernels.Try using the stovetop or an air popper instead.

How do you clean an air fryer?

The goal of cleaning your air fryer is to remove any crumbs or grease stuck inside. These can smoke or burn when you run the machine, giving an acrid taste to anything inside. Most air fryers have a removable crumb-catching tray in the bottom that’s simple to dump in the trash after each use, and the easiest ones to clean come apart easily, with baskets and lids and other pieces that are dishwasher-safe. Other air fryers have parts that must be washed by hand, but that’s usually as easy as wiping them down with a soapy sponge or cloth. Just make sure you read and follow the care instructions for your machine in particular. 

One part you need to be especially careful with is the heating element. Water can damage its electrical circuitry, and it should never be immersed in liquid. Some models have a removable heating element to make cleaning it and the rest of the machine simple. How often should you clean an air fryer? You should empty out the crumbs after every use, at the very least. If that leaves the inside fairly clean, you can go for two or three uses between full cleaning, but not much more. And if your air fryer starts to smoke or give off a bad smell, you should immediately unplug it and give it a thorough cleaning once it’s cooled down.

Why Trust The Spruce Eats?

This roundup was written by Jason Horn, a Spruce Eats staff commerce writer with more than 15 years of experience writing about food, drinks, cooking, and mixology. He compiled testing data from our Lab and home testers, and scoured Amazon to find the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday early deals.