I Switched to Air Fryer Cooking For a Month: 6 Things I Learned

Ninja air fryer with a loaf cake in a tine in front of it

I have tested numerous air fryers over time. At any given time, I have two or three air fryers lined up on my kitchen counter, giving the room the warm, welcoming vibe of an appliances showroom.

As I spent more time using them for work, I broke the habit of automatically switching on my oven when it came time to cook – for simple tasks, at least.

I started to wonder if I really needed to use my oven at all. So I decided to swap all my oven cooking to an air fryer for a month to find out. After all, an air fryer doesn’t actually fry food. It’s a mini convection oven that can cook almost anything an ordinary oven can.

The rules of the experiment were that I had to cook everything in the air fryer that I’d usually cook in the oven, and I couldn’t start eating beige frozen food for every meal.

Reheating means rethinking

My first act of food violence was unthinkingly reheating a couple of pizza slices using the recommended reheating temperature of 170°C/340°F for a little too long, which swiftly and efficiently transformed them into olive-speckled pieces of cardboard.

If you have a powerful air fryer and you’re cooking almost anything except frozen, breaded chicken or chips, the best bit of cooking advice is to turn down the heat by 10°C/50°F.

There’s a learning curve to switching to air fryer cooking, and while you’re figuring out perfect cooking temperatures, you can always add a couple of minutes of extra time. You can’t turn cardboard back into pizza.

Microwave + air fryer is still faster than an oven

I made individual shepherd’s pies in stoneware dishes, because I’m fancy like that, and heated them up the next day. Ordinarily, I’d put them in the oven for at least 45 minutes (and they’d still probably be cold in the middle) but as the oven was banned, I used the air fryer instead.

They came out perfectly – and were done quickly – with a light, crispy crust on the potato. But it was still a bit of a nuisance to keep testing the center of the pie to see if it was cooked.

The best option, as it turned out, was to microwave the shepherd’s pies first to warm them through, then put them in the air fryer for 7 minutes for a golden glow-up. The microwave + air fryer combo also works well with jacket potatoes.

Do not try to pre-cook pastry pies in a microwave: the results will make you sad.

Baking is easier than you expect

Baking a cake in an air fryer has the air of a novelty performance, like playing Clair de Lune on the kazoo. But it’s not only possible, it’s faster and cheaper. Crucially – and perhaps surprisingly – the cake will taste exactly the same.

The main limitation is the amount of cooking space in your air fryer. To bake in a 5-6-litre/quart single-drawer model, you’ll need a small, 15cm/6in round cake tin (buy one from Amazon UK/Amazon US).

However, the air fryer I used, the FlexDrawer, provides enough room to bake a full-size cake.

Crucially – and perhaps surprisingly – the cake will taste exactly the same

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Follow the recipe exactly as you would for an oven but turn down the heat by around 20°C/70°F.

If the air fryer is too hot, the outside of the cake will cook so much more quickly than the inside that it’ll prevent it from rising properly. The cake will wind up dense and yurt-shaped, which is unlikely to be what you were aiming for.

I started to use the air fryer for everything: even things I wouldn’t normally cook in the oven

Experimenting is worth it

Drunk with the success of the air fryer cake, I started to use the air fryer for everything: even things I wouldn’t normally cook in the oven. I crisped up gnocchi, made toasted sandwiches, roasted vegetables and defrosted peas.

Where I’d usually steam vegetables, I’d air fry them instead, with a little oil and garlic. It may not be as healthy as steaming but this concern was significantly outweighed by the benefits of deliciousness.

Forget 10-inch pizzas

Still, there’s one thing that a traditional air fryer just can’t do. You can forget about cooking a supermarket pizza in it. It just won’t fit.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Once, in order to follow the letter of the challenge I’d assigned myself, I cut a pizza in half and cooked the pieces one after the other in the air fryer. They turned out fine but honestly, it’s a weird thing to do.