Air Fryer Recipes & Tips

Tender, juicy steak without hot pans or smoke. This five-ingredient recipe uses sirloin cuts basted in garlic butter, air-fried, and topped with more creamy garlic butter and crispy onions. The unexpected, slightly sweet black garlic turns the butter from your fridge into a restaurant quality condiment. If you can't find black garlic, regular garlic will do just fine. 

This air-fryer riff on the Chinese takeout classic saves the day with nearly half the saturated fat of restaurant versions and loads less clean-up than deep frying at home. Air fryer sizes vary (hence the cook time’s wide range); if you have a smaller air fryer, commit to cooking in batches so that there’s plenty of room for the air to circulate and crisp up the chicken.

Your air fryer has more up its sleeve than the expected crispy tricks—it’s also a fantastic oven for roasting meaty fish fillets like salmon. This recipe serves four, but you can easily cut it in half to make a date night dinner for two. Everything comes together so easily—while the salmon cooks, whip up the quick and tangy fennel slaw. By the time you’re finished, the salmon will be hot and ready to plate up. For a little extra heft, serve this meal with a side of your favorite quick-cooking brown rice. Try it with the air-fryer broccoli with cheese sauce, also pictured.

If you’re looking for a hearty, simple, satisfying meal that you can make without a lot of excess fat, the air fryer is your friend. Here we serve up a crispy pork chop and some sweet, flavorful Brussels sprouts for a winter dish that is as delicious as it is easy to make.

Mexican street corn, better known as elotes, is one of our favorite ways to enjoy fresh corn. The authentic preparation douses chargrilled corn with salty cotija cheese, Mexican crema, mayonnaise, chili powder, garlic, and lime. It's incredible. And while we wouldn't dub this sweet and creamy air fryer chili-lime corn "elotes," we absolutely recommend it as a speedy and delicious side dish for taco and fajita nights. Lightly oiling each ear of corn helps crisp and caramelize the kernels in the air fryer. 

Welcome to Calzone Making 101. Don’t worry—you’ll ace this course. The trick to perfect calzones is to resist the urge to overfill them. Stick to the recipe below so that you can crimp and seal your calzones properly. You’ll also need to flip them once during cooking so that both sides get perfectly browned and crunchy. We love whole-wheat pizza dough for the fiber boost it offers, but regular pizza dough will work just fine. Serve these cheesy guys with a side of marinara for dipping.

This dish gets tons of flavor from the spices. If your fresh oregano is strong, start with less than what’s called for and add more to taste. To speed things up, prep all the ingredients in advance so you can assemble quickly while the fries are still hot. The fries are easy to make in an air fryer, but if you don't have one (yet) no problem: Spread potatoes on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray; bake 10 minutes at 450F. Flip fries, and bake until crisp and brown, another 10-15 minutes. Gina Homolka is the founder of skinnytaste.com and @skinnytaste.

Whether you’re having vegetarian friends over to watch the game or you just enjoy recipe mash-ups starring your favorite flavors, these spicy air-fried cauliflower bites check all the boxes. It just takes a smidgen of blue cheese to add a lot of flavor to the quick stir-together sauce. If you’re not a fan of pungent blue cheese, try milder gorgonzola, or even feta. To make this no-fuss recipe even easier, pick up a package of pre-cut cauliflower florets.

Cooking sweet potato tots in the air fryer yields a slightly crisp exterior and a soft interior. These homemade tots are a great way to sneak veggies into a picky eater’s meal, plus they're more affordable than buying pre-made, frozen sweet potato tots. Spraying the tots with cooking spray helps with browning, though they still don’t brown evenly in the air fryer. Be sure to boil the sweet potatoes just enough that they grate and hold together when shaped, but still retain a little texture. Not a fan of ketchup? Make this Greek yogurt ranch dressing instead.

A genius combination of jalapeño poppers and stuffed mushrooms, this appetizer lovechild gets a healthy makeover thanks to your air fryer. With loads less fat than their traditionally deep-fried parents, these mashup snacks get another kick of bold flavor from a quick stir-together blue cheese sauce.

Much healthier, but with that irresistible “fried” taste and texture, this air fryer popcorn chicken was described by recipe testers as “super addicting!” Dredging the chicken bits in finely-crushed cornflakes add a nice crunch, plus they brown better in the air fryer than if you were to use flour. Don’t skip the powdered sugar, as it also helps brown the popcorn chicken pieces (and also balance the dried spices). Hot tip: Sprinkling the chicken with salt after cooking is a great healthy cooking tip to amplify the flavor of salt while dialing back the total sodium count. Plus, it’s common to salt food after frying it. Don’t forget your dipping sauce—ketchup, BBQ sauce, even Chick-fil-A sauce.

Moist and tender, these air fryer meatballs are absolutely jam-packed with flavor. In fact, cooking them in the air fryer might be one of the best recipe applications for this device. The meatballs are great on their own; they would also be totally delicious over pasta, rice, or spiralized zoodles. To prevent the meatballs from getting over-worked as you form them, use what we call the “claw method”: shape your hand into a claw shape and don’t squeeze too hard when shaping.

This scrumptious cross between cinnamon rolls and biscuits is easier than either and stars a simple, no-yeast dough that requires no rising and bakes up into tender, fluffy bites in a matter of minutes. It’s like an adult-version easy bake oven! You can jazz up the glaze any way you like—we tried swapping out the water for lemon juice and adding a little lemon zest, and loved it. Resist the urge to crowd the basket; these little guys need to bake in batches so they don’t stick together.

These adorable air fryer delights check all the nostalgia boxes, from afternoons spent with your sister’s Easy Bake Oven to Saturday mornings eating piping hot pop tarts fresh from the toaster oven. Our grown-up air fryer version wraps all that goodness into a healthier package, featuring a quick microwave jam with nice chunks of strawberries. Lemon juice cuts the sweetness of the glaze, and the sprinkles—well, they’re just plain fun.

These delights are lighter than traditional churros—almost like éclairs—coming out of the air fryer fluffy and delicious. The cinnamon-sugar mixture creates a thin crust on the outside, delivering that classic churro crunch. Kefir is a dairy product similar to yogurt that is much thinner (it’s drinkable, like a smoothie) and packed with gut-healthy probiotics. The slightly tangy flavor makes the chocolate sauce nice and smooth. Be sure to chill the dough before piping to help it to hold its shape in the air fryer basket. You'll to enjoy the churros immediately as they're best fresh, but you can save any extra chocolate sauce—try drizzling it over frozen yogurt.

Perfectly flaky pies from your air fryer? You bet! Store-bought piecrust is a smart shortcut; it bakes up nice and flaky in the air fryer. Naturally, fresh peaches will make the best filling, but you can use thawed frozen peaches if the fresh kind aren’t in season. Don’t toss out the leftover peach juice—simmer it down in a small saucepan until thickened for a fantastic ice cream topper.