I've been testing the best air fryers for years, and it's safe to say that the dual-zone air fryer gets a lot more use than my oven. Fast, convenient, and easy to clean, there's seemingly no limit to what you can cook in these gadgets. But just because you can doesn't mean you should.
While I regularly test new air fryers, I always come back to my two-drawer air fryer, which has worked wonderfully for nearly two years. However, despite regular cleaning, I've noticed that certain foods create a buildup that's very difficult to remove from my air fryer basket. Worse yet, when these foods build up in your basket, they can end up cooked into your heating element and start creating odors and a host of other air fryer faults.
Of course, part of it comes down to knowing how to properly clean an air fryer and removing debris daily to prevent food from sticking to your inserts and drawers. But if you're having trouble keeping your air fryer clean, these five foods could be causing the odors.
Foods That Make Your Air Fryer Impossible to Clean
1. Bacon fat
Bacon is one of my favorite foods to cook in the air fryer, but if you're seeing a buildup of grease and fat that seems impossible to remove, all that bacon could be the culprit. I love that my air fryer renders the fat from my bacon, leaving it crispy and allowing the excess fat to fall into the base of my air fryer basket. Unfortunately, when that fat falls through the slats of your basket, it solidifies as soon as it cools and becomes very difficult to remove.
If you plan on using your air fryer to cook bacon, I suggest wiping up the grease from your bacon with a piece of paper towel before it has a chance to completely solidify, and soaking your basket in hot water and dish soap between uses to prevent grease splatters from cooking into all the corners of your air fryer.
2. Anything with dough in it
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with an air fryer is cooking foods coated in batter inside. This is because your batter will fall through the slats of your cooking basket and cook in the gaps and on the base of your basket.
Breaded or tempura-coated foods are always best deep-fried or pan-fried, as they become crispy by being suspended in hot oil as they cook. Compare this to an air fryer basket, where your wet mixture might even end up making your fish or wings stick to your basket.
If you want to cook breaded foods in your air fryer, I recommend using a pan so that your food is not placed on top of the slats where the batter can fall off.
3. Sugary foods
I’ve used air fryers to bake cakes before, and while it wasn’t a huge success, it didn’t make a mess in my air fryer either. The biggest problem comes when you’re cooking sugary, sticky frostings or foods with a sugary sauce. Anyone who’s tried to clean caramel off a pan knows that burnt sugar sticks to a surface like no other, not only creating a strong, horrible smell, but also proving incredibly difficult to remove.
Since many air fryers require gentle cleaning so as not to disturb the nonstick coating, you risk actually damaging your air fryer's coating if you cook something with a sugary sauce in your air fryer and it spills or leaks.
4. Baked potatoes
The problem with baking potatoes in your air fryer isn’t that it will make your air fryer dirtier, but that it will involve running your air fryer on high heat for a very long time. This means that any oils or other fats in your air fryer will be firmly baked in place, making them virtually impossible to move without some serious soaking and scrubbing.
If you want to cook a baked potato in the air fryer, I recommend microwaving it for a few minutes before crisping the skin in your air fryer. This will take a fraction of the time and will make your air fryer much easier to clean.
5. Dry rubbing
Air fryers are great for roasting and baking meats and fish, but if you plan on using a dry rub on your food, I wouldn't recommend it. I tend to use a drizzle of oil to help my spices and rubs adhere to my food, because if I dry rub them on my meat, they won't stay put in the air fryer.
It’s important to remember that air fryers are essentially convection ovens. They use powerful fans to circulate hot air around your food, and can often cause lightweight foods to move around in the cooking basket if you’re using a particularly powerful model! If this can happen with bacon or popcorn, imagine what will happen to your spices when they’re hit by the hot air.
Dry mixes will circulate around your basket, and may even get lodged in the heating unit, where they will burn (giving off a pungent odor) and be impossible to reach for cleaning. So next time you use a dry mix, be sure to use a lower temperature to prevent them from spreading throughout your air fryer, or use a good drizzle of oil to make sure they stay put.