How To Tell When You Need A New Air Fryer

Despite what Alton Brown thinks, air fryers do exist, and they are, it seems, here to stay. They've become the preferred method for cooking everything from baked potatoes and salmon to french fries and hard-boiled eggs (you can even make the most delicious Brussels sprouts using this tabletop appliance). They come with a lot of neat accessories, too, like basket liners, baking pans, and muffin tins. If you're anything like us, hardly a day goes by where you don't use your air fryer to reheat leftovers or make succulent chicken for dinner, but all that daily use can start to take its toll. There are a few signs that you should think about replacing your air fryer, and key among them is when the non-stick coating starts to chip or peel.

When this starts to happen, unfortunately, the issues go beyond your air fryer becoming unaesthetic and more difficult to clean; it can actually be dangerous. The damaged Teflon coating might be releasing potentially harmful "forever chemicals" when it heats up, so as soon as you notice your air fryer starting to flake, it's time to replace it. Further, if you notice an off-putting chemical smell that wasn't there before (but now persists), you notice it's not cooking as evenly as it once was, or you see actual sparks when you use it, that air fryer has got to go.

There are other reasons to get a new air fryer that have nothing to do with the wear and tear on your machine, but they are equally valid. Consider the fact that you might have purchased your air fryer when there were only one or two people in your household, but that number has since expanded. If you find yourself batch-cooking a lot to feed your whole family, you're defeating the purpose of your air fryer, which is to prepare foods more quickly. You might simply have outgrown your old appliance, and that's a perfectly reasonable motive for wanting a new one.

The latest models, too, offer exciting upgrades to the previous generation of air fryers (including in some cases, enhanced safety features). Not only are they air frying these days, but multi-use models allow you to bake, toast, broil, and even dehydrate all in one machine. And it might sound counterintuitive, but sometimes the largest air fryers end up taking the least amount of space, as with some of the Ninja multi-purpose models, which take up a lot of countertop real estate when in use, but flip up into surprisingly compact space-savers. If you're tired of constantly having to make space for your admittedly clunky air fryer, a more elegant design could be just the ticket.