How To Prevent Food Sticking To An Air Fryer? – Simple Solutions!

Food sticking to your air fryer’s surface after cooking has finished can be really annoying. Removing food that’s stuck to the air fryer’s basket can be a really tough matter to deal with. That’s why we are here to help you to solve this issue! Let’s go over the best simple ways to prevent food sticking to your air fryer’s basket!

  1. What causes food to stick to your air fryer?
  2. Use silicone mats in your air fryer
  3. Grease up the cooking compartment
  4. Can you use cooking spray such as PAM to grease up my air fryer?
  5. Mix up your food during the air frying process
  6. How to prevent food sticking to your sandwich toaster grill?
  7. The conclusion – how to prevent food sticking to an air fryer?

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What causes food to stick to your air fryer?

Air fryer baskets, just as some cooking pans, feature a special non-stick coating. This alone however cannot fully prevent some types of food from sticking to the basket's surface.
Air fryer baskets, just as some cooking pans, feature a special non-stick coating. This alone however cannot fully prevent some types of food from sticking to the basket’s surface.

Many types of food such as fish, chicken meat, fries and so on can easily stick to your air fryer’s surface and become really hard to remove once the food cools off. In air fryers this can be an issue especially with light and easy to tear foods such as frozen fish sticks or fillets.

Removing food that’s been stuck can often cause even further damage to the air fryer’s non stick surface, especially if it’s done using sharp tools (please don’t do that).

There are a few quick solutions that might help you if you ever had to remove the food from your air fryer’s basket by force. Let’s quickly go over all the most crucial tips.

Use silicone mats in your air fryer

Silicone mats like these can prevent your food from sticking to your air fryer’s surface and make it easier to remove from the basket after cooking is done. You can easily pair using silicone mats with a little bit of oil to lubricate the mat’s surface.

There are many cheap and high quality silicone mats safe to use in an air fryer.
There are many cheap and high quality silicone mats safe to use in an air fryer – check them out here on Amazon.

This way you can assure that your food will be easier to remove than when just putting it inside the air fryer’s basket without any additional padding.

Using silicone mats will also make the cleanup process easier, as the small food particles that normally would stay in the basket will be able to be removed alongside with the mat. Silicone mats can be easily cleaned under a stream of water in a matter of seconds too.

Get yourself a cheap and quality air fryer silicone cooking mat here!

Grease up the cooking compartment

Just as when using cooking pans, if you grease up the air fryer's basket surface just a little bit, it will help with the food sticking issue.
Just as when using cooking pans, if you grease up the air fryer’s basket surface just a little bit, it will help with the food sticking issue. | Photo: Sincerely Media

If you want your food to stop sticking to the air fryer’s basket, you should spread a little amount of oil on your air fryer’s basket surface.

Even if you don’t need to use oil for your dish to begin with, just a small amount of it sprayed on top of the tray or cooking compartment’s inner surface can prevent the food from sticking and make the cleanup easier.

There are lots of different oil spray bottles over on Amazon.
There are lots of different oil spray bottles over on Amazon. Check them out here.

For this purpose it’s best you used a small oil spray bottles like these – it’s a cheap and effective solution. It will make greasing up the air fryer’s basket a easy and simple procedure you can do in a matter of seconds.

Can you use cooking spray such as PAM to grease up my air fryer?

Using pam to grease up your air fryer can cause damage to the air fryer basket's non-stick surface over time.
Using pam to grease up your air fryer can cause damage to the air fryer basket’s non-stick surface over time.

Can you use a nonstick spray in an air fryer? Generally, it is not advised to use any kind of artificial lubricants with your air fryer. It’s recommended to use actual oil rather than solutions such as various cooking sprays (such as PAM) have been reported to cause damage to non-stick surfaces on both pans and kitchen appliances with non-stick coating. Don’t risk it!

Can You Use Cooking Spray on a Nonstick Pan?

Rather than resorting to these kind of agents, you really should consider getting a basic oil spray bottle and using it for air fryer lubrication with organic oil of your choice.

Mix up your food during the air frying process

When preparing food in your air fryer you should mix it up at least once - especially when preparing larger batches.
When preparing food in your air fryer you should mix it up at least once – especially when preparing larger batches. | Source: cookipedia.co.uk

If you prepare any kind of food inside of an air fryer, you’ll probably want to mix it up at least once during cooking time so as to ensure that it’s cooked evenly.

Mixing up and moving around your food during the air frying process will also help with the sticking problem, as small pieces of food will have a smaller chance of getting stuck on the surface of the cooking compartment if they are moved every now and then.

Most air fryer models will automatically turn off when you take out the basket during operation. Stir up your food a bit and flip over larger food pieces and then put the basket back in. It takes just a few seconds and can work wonders.

Of course if your cooking process is longer, you might need to mix up your food a few times more.

Using silicone tongs like these might help you with food that cannot easily be shaken up but needs to be carefully flipped over (like chicken wings or tenders for example).

How to prevent food sticking to your sandwich toaster grill?

Experiencing probles with toasties sticking to your sandwich toaster grill? – Check out this little guide here!

Sandwich toasters tend to cause even more problems with sticking food than air fryers. This is the case especially when the appliance gets older and the anti-sticking surface starts to slowly deteriorate and become less effective.

Why Does My Sandwich Toaster Grill Stick? – Quick Fixes

There are some things you can do to prevent your food from sticking to your sandwich maker and make your toasties come off its surface with ease. If you want to know all about that, check out these simple tricks!

The conclusion – how to prevent food sticking to an air fryer?

As you can see, there are many simple ways to prevent food sticking to your air fryer’s surface. Let’s sum up all the most important ones:

  • Greasing up the air fryer’s basket surface with oil (using an oil spray bottle).
  • Placing silicone mats under your food. (cheap and simple).
  • Stirring up the food at least once during the air frying process.

Using these tricks you can not only make the food come off easier after cooking, but also make your cleanup process faster. We hope we helped you solve your issue. Until next time!

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