Almost burned my house down because I thought you had to preheat the air fryer for 10 minutes like a regular oven

Took a bag of frozen fries turning into charcoal and the smoke alarm going off for me to realize the manual says 3 minutes preheat max, but also you don't even need to preheat for frozen stuff, has anyone else made this mistake?

2 comments

2 Comments

paige3311mo ago

My sister told me she read online that some air fryers literally say "do not preheat" in big red letters because people kept doing this exact thing. The whole preheat thing is SO misleading because regular ovens take forever but air fryers are basically tiny convection ovens that get hot in like 2 minutes flat. I heard a chef on a podcast say the best trick is to just toss your frozen food in cold and add 2 minutes to the cook time, works PERFECT every time. The smoke alarm is basically a rite of passage for air fryer owners at this point though, honestly.

the_ruby1mo ago

@paige331 Right? I did the same thing with my air fryer the first week I had it. I was so mad at that smoke alarm. I just toss my frozen nuggets in cold now and add a couple minutes like you said, works way better. Honestly, I think they should just put a sticker on the front that says "don't preheat this thing, you'll regret it.