So you’ve bought your first air fryer and joined the rumoured 60% of households in the UK who have one, but what do you buy to go with it and do you in fact need to buy anything at all?
In the video below I dive into which popular accessories are worth the money and which ones you don’t need to bother with.
Transcript
So the one accessory that I can guarantee you will use is a set of tongs and they are also one of the least expensive things to buy. You’ll use them nearly every time you cook for turning or lifting things out of the drawer. Just make sure you get the kind with silicone tips so you don’t damage the non-stick coating on your drawers
Racks are something I see a lot of new air fryer owners buying and I think they are often something that ends up not being used. There are two broad types. Ones which are made so you can stack layers of things in the drawer and ones which are more specialist to hold particular things in the drawer
Now the type that are for stacking usually have two or three layers and the idea is you can fit more in whilst allowing the air to circulate around what you are cooking. I have one like this and I’ve only used it once, mostly because they don’t use the space in the drawer very efficiently and they don’t quite deliver on that promise of doubling capacity. Some of the racks you can buy come with skewers, if you like cooking kebabs these are worth having, but bear in mind that because of the size of your air fryer you will only get a few skewers and they are usually quite short!
You can also get a toast rack for your air fryer. This one came with my dual basket Cosori. You can cook toast in the air fryer and if you are pushed for space in your kitchen, some people give up their toaster entirely and switch to the air fryer so they are useful. You can also use this rack for anything that has a large surface area but isn’t too thick, like frozen burgers or hash browns
Turning whole chickens in the drawer can be tricky and you can buy a poultry turning fork to make that easier, but before you rush out and buy one, bear in mind you could just use a carving fork and it would do a very similar job
One accessory that all new air fryer owners could benefit from is a conversion chart….and the good news is you can get one for free, there’s one linked in the description down below. If you are still finding your feet with times and temperatures then they are really useful because they will help you to quickly translate recipes from a conventional oven to an air fryer. If you find it particularly useful there are a few places that make more permanent ones as magnets for your fridge.
Now I’m going to wade into controversial territory and talk about silicone liners! They are one of the most discussed air fryer accessories and they are a little bit like Marmite, to be clear I am a Marmite lover, but not a silicone liner lover! Those that do like them they say they are good for containing mess and for making wet food like lasagne or cottage pie, but if you ask me will tell you that firstly they are often difficult to wash up because of those ribbed bottoms you find in them and the black ones in particular never look clean again even if you only use them once! They are also poor heat conductors and they slow cooking time down AND some people say they affect the taste of food. So I personally don’t recommend buying them
I think there are better things for putting wet food in and other options for keeping your drawer clean and those will be coming up in a moment . One possible use of those silicone liners though is that a lot of them have handles, so which means you can put dishes inside them and use the liner which as I say is a poor conductor of heat to lift dishes in and out of the drawer, but there are also other options for doing that too…
So the cheapest kind of lifter that you can get is actually one that you make at home, a DIY option, a tin foil sling which you make by placing tin foil underneath the container in your drawer making sure it doesn’t stick out of the top of the drawer too much. You can also use oven mitts and there are small silicone ones made especially for air fryers or you can use a normal oven glove, but they tend to be a bit bulky. There is also a special designed lifter you can buy and I was cynical about this until I tried one, but they do a pretty good job. They work best on dishes with a lip, you hook them around the dish squeeze and lift and then release. They cost about £7 or $10 and I find them quite useful.
I said there are better options to cook wet dishes and the good news is you may already have them in your kitchen cupboards. Remember anything that is oven-proof can be used in an air fryer. I had a look through my cupboards and found these that all fit my air fryer. This is a metal takeaway-style dish, great for batch cooking and sticking in the freezer. You can actually use them more than once of course, just wash them up. Then I have more of a ceramic-style dish, I’ve had this one for about 20 years but it fits all the air fryers that I’ve tried and these metal dishes are great for single portions too and they stack so they don’t take up a lot of room in the cupboard.
Also a quick mention for cake tins. You probably have cake tins like this which are 23cm or 9 inches wide and will be too big for a lot of air fryers, but I also had these smaller ones which I alreday had in my cupboard and they are 19cm or 7 inches wide and they fit perfectly in my two drawer Cosori
By the way if you are downsizing tins like this and you are wondering how you work out what fraction of the recipe to use for a smaller tin, there is a brilliant website called omnicalculator where you go on it, tell it what size tin you usually use for a recipe and the size you want to use instead and it does all the maths on the ingredients for you.
On the subject of cakes, you may have been considering what size loaf tins will fit into your air fryer. A 2lb tin is what you would normally put in a big oven, but there are smaller 1lb tins you can buy for air fryers. These are great for cakes, but bear in mind that if you use them to make a loaf they you will end up with tiny slices of bread.
So I said there were better options than silicone to keep the drawers of your air fryer clean and these are them. Disposable liners made from grease-proof paper, either ones with sides, these arrived from Amazon a little squashed, or ones that are perforated and flat. I like the flat perforated ones, air can still circulate through them but they will contain the bulk of the mess like melted cheese. Just a quick note though, don’t put them into the drawer without anything on top of them because of course they are lightweight and if you turn the pre-heat function on they will blow up into the heating element and catch fire
So chances are your muffin or cupcake trays that you normally use in your oven won’t fit in your air fryer. So you can buy mini ones for air fryers, but do check the size carefully as they are often very small. A better option is to buy individual silicone moulds or ramekins.
The silicone ones like this have handles which is perfect and I know what you’re thinking I told you silicone was a poor heat conductor, BUT it’s a trade-off and you can get away with it more on small things and of course they are non-stick and stuff pops out of them really easily! You can also use metal pudding basins or oven-proof ramekins. These work for individual puddings, cakes or – for the British audience Yorkshire puddings – talking of which you can also make one large yorkshire pudding in the drawer with the crisper tray out.
Another must-have accessory, but you may already one one is a meat thermometer. I use one a lot, particularly when I’m cooking chicken. It’s particularly useful because it will take you a while to get used to timings on your air fryer and so it removes any element of doubt about whether the food is cooked. Some air fryers are sold with a built-in probe already, but I personally like having a stand-alone one because I can use it in a variety of applications. I also have this magnet that I got from Pampered Chef years ago with the temperatures for different meats, but if you don’t have something like that just remember 74c which is the most important temperature as that’s the one for chicken
To get a crispy finish on your food you will need something to apply oil to your savoury dishes. You can either use a silicone brush to coat the food or a spray bottle but don’t buy the pre-filled oil sprays because they contain an ingredient that can damage the non-stick coating of air fryers and a lot of instruction books now include a warning about that. Instead, buy an empty oil spray bottle and fill it with an oil of your choice.