I switched to air fryer cooking for a month: 6 things I learned

I’ve tested a lot of air fryers. 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.

Here’s what I learned in that month.

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 centre 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.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Emma Rowley / Foundry

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.

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

Emma Rowley / Foundry

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.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Emma Rowley / Foundry

Unless you want to invest in an air fryer oven or a dedicated pizza oven, you’ll need to use your regular oven for pizza.

There are a few other things you shouldn’t cook in an air fryer: leafy vegetables, including spinach, which can be blown around, and anything with a wet batter. I also wouldn’t cook a steak in anything other than a pan.

My oven now seems Medieval

Why is it so gigantic? Why does everything take so long to cook? Why is it almost impossible to clean?

Opening my oven now is like time-travelling back to a filthy Medieval forge, which is a place I very much don’t want to have lunch.

After a month of exclusively using an air fryer, I rarely use my oven now. I haven’t quite reached the stage of storing vintage denim in it, as Carmy does in The Bear, but unless I’m making a full roast dinner, or cooking a pizza, it doesn’t get switched on.

It’s hard to judge how significant the energy savings of this experiment were (although air frying cooking will definitely save you money in the long term) but the amount of time and hassle I saved myself in cooking and cleanup was huge.

Which air fryer did I use?

I decided on the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer because, as the name suggests, it’s a flexible cooker. You can use its two, 5.2L cooking zones separately, or only use one, or remove the divider between them to create a huge, 10.4L “megazone”. This gives you the space to cook whole roasts, or bake full-size cakes.

You can read my FlexDrawer review to find out more, or see our most recommended dual-zone air fryers to see how it stacks up against the competition. The FlexDrawer isn’t available in the US but the very similar Ninja Foodi FlexBasket is. Bear in mind that it’s a little smaller, with a 7QT capacity across the two cooking spaces.

To get a similar volume of cooking space to the FlexDrawer, you could also use an air fryer oven. We’ve tested and reviewed some of the best, which you can browse in our air fryer oven round-up. We’ve also got recommendations for the best Ninja air fryer and the best air fryer overall.