An air fryer is your ticket to fast, clean, and surprisingly healthy meals — think perfectly crispy bacon, fries and chicken without a stovetop splattered in grease and regret.
Whether you just tore open the box or you’ve been air-frying everything in sight for years, a few smart techniques can take your results from good to genuinely great. It’s the rare kitchen gadget that actually earns its counter space. The catch? Owning one and knowing how to use one are two very different things.
That’s where we come in. From must-have accessories to rookie mistakes you’ll want to avoid, these expert-backed tips will help you squeeze every last bit of crispy, golden, deeply satisfying goodness out of your machine.
1. Buy an air fryer that’s the right size
If you haven’t bought an air fryer yet, the first decision to make is arguably the most important: What size to get. Air fryers are often measured in quarts, the smallest being around 2 and the largest about 8.
Because of the wide range of sizes, before buying, check the air fryer’s measurements and make sure you have the counter space and wall outlets to accommodate it.
2. Invest in the right air fryer accessories
When you’re cooking french fries in the air fryer, it’ll work best if each piece of potato is a uniform size. Cutting by hand can be challenging, so my advice is to buy a cutter that’ll help you out. It’s one of the fastest, easiest-to-use tools you can add to your kitchen.
Additional air fryer accessories, such as tongs, silicone basket liners, meat thermometers and olive oil sprayers can elevate your air-frying experience.
3. (Almost) always shake and flip
For making fries or something similar (tater tots, chicken fingers, brussels sprouts, and so on), you’ll want to give the basket a good shake at least once during the cooking process. This will move the food around and ensure nothing sticks to your air fryer.
If you’re cooking something like chicken wings, make sure to flip them halfway through the process so they end up perfectly crispy on all sides.
4. Don’t layer or crowd the basket
Remember, your air fryer is essentially a little oven. If you were cooking, let’s say, chicken breasts in a regular oven, you wouldn’t stack them on top of one another, would you? No, so it’s the same deal here. You’ll want to spread them out as best you can, and don’t overload the basket. And never, ever layer your chicken wings, tenders or anything of the sort.
If you want more room in your air fryer, you can purchase metal racks that can give you double the amount of cooking space.
Overloading the air fryer will cause your food to heat unevenly, knocking down the quality of your food. If you’re cooking a lot of food, doing it in batches is best to ensure quality.
5. Adapt oven recipes
If you want to make an old favorite in your air fryer, there’s an easy way to adapt nearly every oven recipe for air fryer use.
Typically, you’d lower the cooking temperature by about 25 degrees Fahrenheit. If the oven recipe calls for 350 degrees Fahrenheit (176 Celsius), the fryer is set to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (160 Celsius). Similarly, you’ll need about 20% less cooking time, though this can certainly vary, depending on the kind of food, the cooking temperature and so on.
If you need help, this guide to converting recipes to your air fryer is here to help. It’ll convert standard cook times and temperatures.
6. Don’t forget to clean this part of your air fryer
Though the air fryer can occasionally seem like magic, there’s one task it can’t handle: cleaning itself. Unfortunately, that step is solely on you, but we’ve rounded up our best air fryer cleaning tips to help you out, including how to clean one of the most overlooked areas of your air fryer.
7. Go easy on the oil, but you may need some
One big selling point for air fryers is that food cooked in them requires less oil than other methods. That’s good news but it doesn’t mean you won’t need any oil. I find that certain foods, such as chicken, vegetables, and fish, benefit from a gentle mist of olive oil, but be careful not to soak them in oil, since the superconvection heat tends to supercharge any fat or oil in the basket.
The best way to spread a light and even coating is with a cheap $8 oil sprayer
8. Take some chances
Yes, fries and chicken wings are some of our favorite air fryer staples, but you can make many other foods as well. CNET has a rundown of some of the best air fryer foods, and if you want specific recipes, we have those too. Below, I’ve gathered seven additional recipes you’ll definitely want to try:
Are you sold on the air fryer magic but still don’t know which fryer to buy? Here are the best air fryers of 2025, ranked by CNET’s resident expert, to help you decide.
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