Air fryers have taken over kitchens, making crispy, tasty meals with little to no oil. But while they’re perfect for fries and chicken wings, not everything belongs in an air fryer! Some foods can turn into a disaster as they create a mess, ruin your meal, or even damage your machine. Before you toss anything, here are 12 foods you should never put in an air fryer.
12. Bacon
It may come as a surprise to you that Bacon made it to the list. While a piece of extra-crispy bacon without heavy grease sounds amazing, air fryer may not be the best tool to cook your bacon. Why? The hot air goes around the air fryer, which makes the bacon fat splatter all over the tool. It leaves a big, greasy mess that’s too hard to clean! Instead, try to air fry lean turkey bacon to skip the mess and save time.
11. Leafy Vegetables
Crispy veggie chips are the perfect snack to munch on. They’re a much better option than the ones that we can easily buy in the stores. The good news is you can create healthy chips with just an air fryer! However, if you like turning leafy greens into crispy chips, it wouldn’t work in an air fryer since it would just cause the leaves to fly around. It might also result in unevenly cooked leafy chips.
10. Cheesy Dishes
We all know that cooking Cheesy Dishes causes the cheese to ooze out. While our air fryer can take a little cheese here and there, you should be able to measure the cheese content of your food. If you think that your meal contains too much cheese, it’s better to keep it out of your air fryer. This saves you time to clean your machine due to cheese explosion.
9. Large Whole Meat
Whole Chicken or bone-in meat cooked in an air fryer won’t work. Why? It might result in unevenly cooked meat, making the other parts not safe to eat. Try to cut the meat into smaller portions when you plan to cook them in an air fryer.
8. Food in Wet Batter
You might want to cook your battered fish and tempura the old-fashioned way through frying. Why? Well, like Cheesy Dishes, food drenched in batter might drip down to the base of the machine, which makes it difficult to clean up.
7. Baked Goods
While reheating baked goods in your air fryer is perfectly fine, you must not use it as an alternative to the oven. Just like food drenched in wet batter, your goods might be drip which is difficult to clean up. Also, an air fryer has the potential to completely dry out your goods, which removes moisture, especially in bread.
6. Raw Rice and Grains
While you can use a special pan insert fort the grains not to fall off, they might still count as the worst foods to cook in your machine. Why? They might come as unevenly cooked! Still, an air fryer is good for reheating your leftovers rather than trying to cook them raw.
5. Eggs
Eggs won’t work with air fryers, especially hard-boiled ones. There are a lot of recipes available online for hard-boiled eggs cooked in the air fryer, but unless you want them to have a chewy and rubbery texture, then you might just want to stay away from the air fryer. Besides, there are many different ways to prepare hard-boiled eggs!
4. Toast
The internet might even tell you to Toast your bread in an air fryer but you might want to skip them. Why? It turns your Toast hard and dry, which makes it difficult to eat. Instead of toasting your bread in your air fryer, you might want to go to the traditional method of putting it in a toaster.
3. Popcorn
An air-fried Popcorn sounds like a healthy snack; however, you must put it away from your air fryer. When you store them inside an air fryer, it’s highly possible that the kernels will fly around. Worse, it could get stuck around the corners of your air fryer, causing serious problems later on.
2. Hamburgers
One thing to note is that air fryers aren’t designed to grill meat, even through medium-rare. The inside of the meat could easily cook as medium-rare, although the outside won’t make the meat brown. It results in uneven cooking. This is especially true when you want the meat to be juicy and red, as it won’t balance out without a char.
1. Shellfish
Shellfish are meant to be cooked in liquid, not in an air fryer. If you’ve eaten a Shellfish, then you would know that it has moisture to it. Cooking them in an air fryer might result in a chewy, rubbery texture. It’s like chewing on a pencil eraser!