The Oil Trick To Always Follow When Air Frying Potatoes

There's a lot of ways to prepare a potato (boiling, mashing, sticking in stews, etc.), but air frying taters is more straightforward than most. It's also among the healthiest ways to cook crispy potatoes because you don't need much oil. That said, without any oil at all you do run into a problem: Your potatoes begin to stick to the basket and may tear in two when you try to pull them out. For help, we spoke to chef and content creator Violet Witchel about how to make sure your spuds come out of the air fryer just right. Instead of adding oil into the air fryer as you might with a pan, she had a different solution.

Even though air frying is pretty dry compared to deep frying, which involves submerging the potatoes in oil, you can still use a little bit of oil before you begin air frying. "You can lightly toss them in oil," Witchel said. "It'll help conduct heat more evenly and prevent them from sticking to the air fryer basket!" While you're tossing the potatoes in oil, you can also include the seasonings to begin flavoring the potatoes early. You don't need much oil for this step. Assuming you've got 1 pound of potatoes, 2 tablespoons of oil should be enough to coat the potatoes. It's a simple trick to make air-fried food taste deep fried, and much less greasy.

What sort of oil should you be using? Witchel heartily recommends olive oil for this step, but any type of vegetable oil or canola oil will also prevent the potatoes from sticking to the basket or each other. Extra virgin olive oil will have more flavor than a light olive oil, but keep in mind that a light olive oil can better withstand the 400 degrees Fahrenheit that most air fryer potato recipes will recommend. In any case, before you start tossing your taters and oil, Witchel says you should "thoroughly rinse and scrub the potatoes to remove debris and use a fork to poke a few holes so the steam can release."

If you're really hoping to avoid using any oil at all, or you're concerned that the oil could make the potatoes too greasy once they come out of the air fryer, Witchel offered an alternative strategy. According to Witchel, "Just line your air fryer basket with parchment so they don't stick." Parchment paper is coated in non-stick silicone and is mainly used for baking, but it's built to withstand high heat and can safely sit beneath your potatoes as a protective layer between them and the basket. A small amount of oil still wouldn't hurt, though.