How A Single Piece Of Bread Can Keep Your Air Fryer Clean

The air fryer is one of the most popular kitchen inventions of the 21st century. Though this small appliance hardly existed 10 years ago (it was technically invented in 2005, but didn't become popular in the United States until around 2017), it's made such a name for itself that it's hard for many home cooks to imagine how they lived without it. Though an air fryer is convenient and easy to use, it still needs to be cleaned just like any other appliance. And an easy way to prevent your air fryer from getting full of oil and gunk is to stick a piece of bread at its base.

Air fryers are essentially tiny convection ovens that cook by circulating hot air around food. All air fryers come with an air fryer basket, which is a separate, perforated piece that sits an inch or two above the actual base. The food cooks in the basket, so the free space below the base is how the air circulates on all sides. But, unfortunately, you might make the mistake of letting oils and other substances leak through the basket's holes, creating a mess underneath. That's where the bread comes in.

Rather than letting those oils and liquids leak onto the floor of the air fryer, place bread underneath the basket, which will absorb some of those spills and keep the base much cleaner. The trick is to make sure the bread is thin, so that there is still enough room between the bread and the air fryer basket for the air to circulate; don't let the bread block the holes in the air fryer basket. Then, once your meal is cooked, you can just remove the bread from the bottom of the basket and throw it away. Whatever residue is left in the basket's base, if any, will be much less than what it could have been and will make cleaning that air fryer basket easier.

Rather than waste good-quality bread, use bread that's near the end of its shelf life or grab the base slice of the bread, which often gets thrown out anyway. If you don't have bread or don't want to use it for this purpose, you can also place a sheet of parchment paper at the air fryer base, which will help pick up spills.