5 Air Fryer Disadvantages No One Wants To Talk About

The air fryer may be the most popular kitchen gadget in the U.S., with approximately 60% of households owning one, but that still leaves 40% in the non-believers camp. Confession: I, too, am an air fryer agnostic. I owned one a few years ago, but I was never happy with the results, and I eventually gave it away to one of my son's friends. Will I be buying another one? Not likely.

The main issue with air fryers is the letdown that comes when they fail to meet over-inflated expectations. Despite the name, air "fried" food tastes nothing whatsoever like actual food fried in oil. Yes, it's healthier, but then, so is Tom Brady's avocado "ice cream," and there's no way I'd accept that in place of Baskin-Robbins. Nor am I the only heretic who feels that air fryers don't live up to the hype. As a Redditor noted, "People talk about air fryers like they are Star Trek Replicators (I pressed a button and got delicious hot food out of nowhere), and they aren't." Another Redditor pulled no punches, adamantly insisting, "Air fryers suck [...] and nothing that comes out of them tastes good."

In addition to producing disappointing food, air fryers also have some drawbacks that even dedicated fans acknowledge. They're not quite as versatile as they're made out to be, and they somehow manage to be too small to fit much of anything while at the same time occupying a fair amount of countertop real estate. They can also be messy or just plain inconvenient, depending on what you're cooking.

When you listen to air fryer evangelists, they talk about the appliance like it can replace everything else in the kitchen (with the possible exception of the refrigerator). Yes, it's true that you can roast a whole chicken, but the question is: Should you? And the answer is no, unless your oven is broken or it's 95 degrees out and you don't have a/c. For roasting, the oven still reigns supreme, since large pieces of meat won't heat evenly in the cramped confines of an air fryer. Baking a cake in your air fryer is also unlikely to yield the best results, since the top of the cake might burn while the center remains raw. Even if you cover the cake to promote even heating, the texture will still be denser than that of an oven-baked one.

Roast chicken and cake are just a few of the foods that should never go into an air fryer. Wet batter or breading will drip off and make a mess, as will sauce or melted cheese. Shellfish will turn rubbery, and rice won't cook properly without the moisture an air fryer won't supply. As for popcorn, it's an air fryer disaster waiting to happen. Not only is it likely to burn, but some of the kernels could get caught in the heating element, possibly causing it to catch on fire.

So what are air fryers good at, anyway? Well, they do a better job than the microwave of reheating leftover pizza and fries. If those items form one of your essential food groups, the air fryer may indeed be your salvation. If you have a more varied diet, though, you're going to need some alternate appliances.

One reason I won't be replacing my air fryer is that the spot it once occupied has long since been taken over by other food-related flotsam. Even though I owned one of the smaller models, it still took up a sizable chunk of countertop — even a tiny, 2-quart air fryer needs at least a square foot, especially when you consider that you'll need to leave some space on either side. In my not-so-sizable kitchen, space is one of the most valuable commodities there is, and I don't see myself clearing room for an air fryer again.

Again, this isn't strictly a "me" problem. While I do live in a single-family home (albeit a small one), more than 40 million Americans live in apartments, and I've never seen one of these that allotted much kitchen space. When space is at a premium, some sacrifices must be made. A Quora user elaborated: "In New York, we deal with small kitchens and cabinets. We have things of daily use like [a] toaster, coffee maker, dish drying rack, bread box, [and] canisters [for] everyday usage." For that person (and me, and many others), a bulky air fryer doesn't make the cut.

I can just hear the air fryer aficionados now, protesting that the only reason I didn't have a good air fryer experience was that I chose the wrong size air fryer for my kitchen. Actually, I did not, because as I already pointed out, my kitchen is quite small. So is my household, so a 2-quart air fryer was quite adequate, even though the basket admittedly didn't hold much. Even if I'd chosen a larger model, however, it would never have fit as much food as can be put into an average-sized oven. In fact, one of the air fryer's main advantages — the fact that it heats and cooks quickly –- is predicated on its smaller-than-an-oven size. This, in turn, limits its capacity.

Should you wish to cook more than a small amount of any given item in your air fryer, you may be tempted to pack the basket with as much as it can hold. But this, again, defeats the purpose of the appliance. Air fryers cook by circulating hot air, and an overcrowded basket doesn't allow for much circulation. The best advice is to divide your recipe into smaller portions, but when you need to make multiple batches, are you really saving much time over simply using your oven?

An air fryer is basically a mini convection oven, but there is one feature that sets it apart from a convection toaster oven: The powerful fan is in close proximity to the food, which does tend to speed up cooking times. The downside to the fan being just inches away, however, is that smaller, lighter foods can actually be blown around by the gusts of air. As one Reddit user related, "I was air frying tostadas with just beans and cheese, and I hear like a crackling sound from the air fryer. I open it to find my tostada completely flipped face down." This same person had previously experienced having shredded cheese blown off a tostada before it became hot enough to melt. As a commenter explained, "There is a high-powered fan in there. Light food is not your friend."

It's not just food that blows around in the air fryer, either. If you're cooking something and find that the top is browning too fast, you may want to cover it with a sheet of foil, but that could prove problematic. Unlike the microwave, you won't see sparks when you air fry foil, but a loosely-placed sheet could easily fly off the food. Needless to say, this will happen with parchment paper, too, unless it's weighted down. As parchment paper is flammable, it could also fly up into the heating element and potentially catch on fire. Keep this in mind if you're deciding whether air fryer liners are ever worth using. If you must go with paper ones, never, ever use them in an empty air fryer (as might be the case when you're preheating). Instead, wait until you've added food that's heavy enough to hold the liner in place.

Even if an air fryer cooks your food in a flash, you still have to spend time scrubbing it out after cooking. With an oven, you can usually wait a few months between cleanings, but air fryers are much more needy. Cleaning your air fryer the right way is a multi-step process that involves removing the basket or racks and washing them by hand or in the dishwasher. Before reassembling, you'll also need to wipe out the interior quite thoroughly, since the fan will have spattered grease and crumbs all over. Every so often, you may also need to use a degreaser to cut through the baked-on grime. As one Quora user said of their air fryer, "I think the biggest downfall of it, at least the one I have anyways, is it's a pain in the butt to clean!"

Of course, TikTok is full of helpful hints and hacks that are said to simplify the air fryer cleaning process, but do they really work? One of them — filling the appliance with soapy water and then heating it up for a few minutes — turns out not to be very effective. Worse yet, it can actually be pretty dangerous, since water and electricity don't play nicely together, and liquid can cause the machine to malfunction. (According to ITV News, electrical damage due to this cleaning technique has caused at least one fire in the U.K.) If you don't want to clean your machine the labor-intensive way, you may be better off choosing another appliance for cooking.