Which Brand of Air Fryer is the Easiest to Clean?
The air fryer is a great device for those who enjoy cooking healthy and fast. It has just the right amount of power to handle any job, yet it’s so small that you can easily store it away when not in use.
But even with such benefits, there are still some things about cleaning this air fryer that need consideration before purchase. For instance, how long does it take for an average person to clean the interior?
What type of debris might be found in the fryer? How easy is it to clean after cooking?
And how often should you be cleaning out your air fryer’s interior, and can one really do that without damaging its performance or health of any kind?
Read on to learn about these questions and more.
Which air fryer is easiest to clean
So let’s get straight to the point, after extensive research and extensively reaching out to a community of air fryer users, the majority of people who expressed their satisfaction with cleaning their device are those who have three brands. The three easiest Brands to clean are the Ninja Foodi, Cosori, and Gourmia.
You’re probably wondering oh, what makes these air fryers any different? Well, the answer to this is particularly in the way they are built. The question you should ask yourself is if this air fryer has many small crevices. Does it have a lot of moving parts? Is it built with a lot of hard-to-reach places? Are there any vents that help release the steam?
Getting in under the heating element for deep cleaning isn’t an easy task. Fortunately, we found the three best air fryers that provide the most structurally conscious cleaning benefits.
Best: Ninja Foodi air fryer
The Ninja Foodi is probably today’s most popular brand name for an air fryer. It’s no surprise that when anyone starts talking about air fryers oh, the name Ninja Foodi comes up first.
We’ve asked multiple people and the answer is pretty unanimous when they say that the Ninja Foodi almost never gives them an issue when cleaning. These machines are often easy to clean because they are made with a nonstick coating. It just takes a minute or two after you’ve placed the tray and baskets inside the sink submerged under warm and soapy water.
The non-stick coating, sometimes made of Teflon, not only helps prevent food from sticking to the insides of the basket but also makes cleaning and wiping off the remanence of the food incredibly easy.
Most of the loose equipment such as the basket and the mesh tray that comes with the air fryer are dishwasher safe. However, I recommend that you always check with the manual and make sure. Ninja Foodi makes a variety of different types of air fryers.
Runner up: Cosori air fryer
While the Ninja Foodi ranks among the top easiest to clean air fryers, the Cosori is a very close second. You wouldn’t believe the number of people that actually standby how easy it is to clean a Cosori air fryer.
Cosori usually makes incredibly average-sized, lightweight air fryers. This makes picking up and moving the device around easy.
The company builds everything in its air fryer to have a non-stick coating. This makes it easy to just simply wipe the left behind foods that may still be lingering in your basket.
In fact, there are several videos that show actual users cleaning the Cosori air fryer with running water, soap, and a plastic scrub.
Once again, similar to Ninja Foodi, accessories are often times dishwasher safe. However, always check your manual to make sure.
Third place: Gourmia air fryer
The Gourmia air fryer is also a very easy-to-clean device. This company has been around for a very long time. They make a variety of kitchen appliances.
While they’re not known for their air frying devices, we’ve had quite a few people recommended to us as one of the easiest air fryers to keep clean.
One person mentioned that the non-stick coating was out of this world. He couldn’t get anything to stick to the basket even if he tried.
This brings up the point of concern when it comes to what kind of materials all of these companies use when it comes to nonstick coating. One way to prevent any issues is to make sure to understand that these coatings can come off. When you’re washing these things, scrub carefully with a gentle scrub.
Which type of air fryer is easy to clean
There are mainly two types of air fryers. One is the basket-style air fryer, and the other is an oven-style air fryer. What type of air fryers do similar functions and cook in similar ways. It really boils down to which one you prefer.
When it comes to the basket-type air fryers, you’re looking at cleaning the entire basket with all the accessories that come in the basket. Wiping down the interior of the air fryer is also highly recommended every time you use it.
For oven-style air fryers, the pan and Grill are almost certainly always recommended to clean after every use. You should also clean the insides of the air fryer at least once every week or two.
How do you clean an air fryer?
To clean an air fryer, you should take it apart and wash the parts.
- Start with unplugging the device and waiting for it to cool if you’ve just finished cooking.
- Remove all the parts (basket, liner, inner container, etc) and leave them submerged in the sink with soapy warm water.
- Wipe down the insides of the air fryer including the heating element with a wet towel.
- Gently scrub the removable parts in the sink with a microfiber cloth. Don’t use any harsh material. You might accidentally remove the non-stick coating.
- Use a toothbrush or a Q-tip to get underneath the hard-to-reach places.
- Leave both the parts and the air fryer in an open area (your kitchen counter) to completely try.
If you’re having a lot of trouble cleaning your air fryer because the gunk just won’t come off, head on over to this article we have on how to easily clean and deep clean your air fryer. We’ve gathered tons of tips from our community on what they do to really clean a dirty air fryer.
Why do air fryers get so dirty?
The way air fryers are made to cook strongly contributes to why they get dirty so often. When you’re cooking food in an air fryer, it requires a semi-sealed chamber so that the airflow can do its magic. The unfortunate part about this is that cooking food inside a container will likely lead to that container getting really dirty.
Now the containers aren’t completely covering everything. The fan and the heating element need access to the food. And so when it is heating up the food, the vapors from the food’s moisture and oils begin to circulate throughout the chamber. This oil and grease then clean the surfaces of the heating element, the fan, and the basket.
If you don’t end up cleaning it right away after each meal, it’s likely that the next meal will have even more oils and grease buildup on top of the older residue.
There are people who have never cleaned their air fryer with you in the lifetime of that air fryer. The grease that builds up gets hard and is difficult to clean. You end up using harsh chemicals trying to get rid of these things.
Best tips to make cleaning an air fryer easier
Clean your air fryer after every use
We can’t stress this enough. It is perhaps one of the biggest tips most veteran air fryer users have. Make sure to clean your air fryer after each and every use. If you wait too long oh, the grease and the oils from the food start to build upon each other and that makes it incredibly difficult to clean.
Make sure your air fryer is clean before using it
This is a pro tip from one of our readers. She says that she has been fooled more than once after preparing her meal. Once she’s ready to place it in the air fryer she noticed that it’s all a mess with bits and pieces of food in there.
It’s likely that people in the family will be using your air fryer as well and a lot of them might not know that they need to clean it afterward. Think, teenagers.
Use a microfiber washcloth to wipe it down after washing
Some of the parts of an air fryer are incredibly sensitive to abrasion. They’re made with a non-stick coating that you really don’t want to damage. This non-stick coating helps you continue to clean your air fryer and all the accessories as well as make it easier for the food to slide right out.
Try to avoid metal scrubs or any hard abrasive scrubs. If you properly take care of your air fryer, then that means you’ll most likely still have the non-stick Coating intact for a long time. This means that cleaning your air fryer is usually a simple wipe-down.
Use a wet paper towel to wipe down the heating element
Not enough people do this. And most of the knowledgeable air fryer owners would even say that this is something you need to do every single time you cook with your air fryer.
The food that gets stuck to your heating element is a real problem. When food starts to build upon your heating element and you don’t clean it, it directly cooks that again the next time. The oils and grease start to become really hard and you might end up taking hours trying to remove them.
Another issue is that once things start building up on the heating element you run the risk of a potential fire or at the very least a really funky smell coming from your air fryer.
Use Dawn’s Powerwash liquid
The highly, most recommended dishwashing soap to use on your air fryer is hands-down Dawn’s Powerwash Liquid Dish Soap. This stuff will run through and cut down a huge amount of your work in scrubbing. I highly suggest buying one of these bottles and keeping them as an emergency detergent to get to those hard-to-reach places and hard-to-remove dirty areas.
Check out the item here it’s a bottle spray on Amazon for Dawn’s Powerwash Liquid.
Use a silicone liner
This is also another Pro tip that most users will have. If you want to make sure that your food doesn’t stick onto your air fryer too much, you can use a silicone liner to make sure that it is the layer that separates your food from the actual basket.
Cleaning the silicone liner is super easy. And it’s relatively very cheap to replace. These things are also air fryer safe so you don’t have to worry about burns, smoke, fires, or anything like that.
Check out what we mean. Here’s a really good silicone liner on Amazon.
And as a really cool accessory that helps you clean even less of the air fryer basket, check out the silicone basket on Amazon.
Use aluminum foil
If you rather not use any silicone liners oh, then the alternative approach is to either use aluminum foil or parchment paper. You can leave these parchment papers at the very bottom of the basket. However, you’re going to have to find food that will hold the aluminum foil or parchment paper down.
Remember, the air fryer specializes in using a fan that blows air throughout the entire chamber. If the parchment paper or aluminum foil starts moving around a lot oh, there’s a chance that it will get stuck in one of the vents and even make contact with the heating element. Issues like this can cause smoke and even fires.
Most people would highly recommend not using aluminum foil or parchment paper in air fryers. Make sure you know what you’re doing before attempting this.
Unplug the air fryer when cleaning
This is the very first step you should do when cleaning your air fryer. Unplugging your air fryer is vital to your safety. This makes sure that there is no more electricity that is running through your air fryer. It’s also highly suggested that you wait for at least 15 to 20 minutes before starting your clean.
The best thing to do here is to unplug the air fryer, go and eat your meal for about 30 minutes to an hour, and then come back to clean your air fryer.
Other interesting articles:
