If you’re a passionate home cook or a health-conscious individual, you’ve heard about an air fryer’s benefits. This countertop tool has swept the culinary world, offering a healthier alternative to traditional frying methods.
However, one frequently asked question is, “What pan can I put in an air fryer?” We will go into the numerous alternatives for pans in air fryers in this detailed guide, ensuring that your culinary excursions are both safe and enjoyable.
How Does An Air Fryer Work?
Some people think that air fryers are small versions of convection ovens; honestly, that’s exactly what they are.
Air fryers are small kitchen appliances that use a built-in fan and a heating coil to cook food evenly on all sides. The fan spreads the heat through a small space inside the device. Food comes out perfectly crisp and golden brown.
The best thing about an air fryer is that it doesn’t need oil to cook. You don’t need oil, butter, or grease in an air fryer to make your food crispy.
Instead, the fan sends heat in all ways toward your food, which cooks it quickly and evenly. Still, you can add a tablespoon of any fat you like to your meals if you want to make them taste better.
So, since air fryers are like small convection ovens, you will need to find the right baking pan to put in the food basket. If you don’t, you might end up with a mess of melted food on your hands (and in your air fryer)!
How To Use Different Pans In An Air Fryer?
In this part, I’ll discuss the different oven-safe bakeware types. When looking for the following bakeware, you should still do your research and look for a label that says it can go in the oven.
Made Of Metal
You can bake in almost any kind of metal pot or pan. Stainless steel and Aluminum are the most popular metals for bakeware, but copper and cast iron can also be used in an air fryer.
The main difference between the different kinds is how well a metal dish transfers heat. Aluminum heats up quickly, but it is easy to bend. Stainless steel is similar, but it is a lot stronger.
Cast iron is often used for searing and cooking, but before you use it to cook food, you should heat it up in your air fryer.
The stone
Do you have a small pizza stone that you’d like to use in your air fryer? You can, which is good news! Stone is safe to use in air fryers, even when it is right next to the heating coil in the roof.
The only hard part is getting a small pizza stone to fit in the food basket of the air fryer.
If you’re having trouble finding the right pizza stone, this 12-inch one should fit inside an air fryer with 6 quarts or more capacity.
Made of clay
Ceramic bakeware, like casserole plates and Dutch ovens, keeps heat very well. This means your food will cook faster in ceramic than cast iron or stone.
Just don’t hit the baking dish against the walls of the food basket to keep the enamel layer from breaking.
Hardened Glass
If you want to use a glass bake dish in your air fryer or oven, make sure it says “tempered” on the bottom. Tempered glass has been treated in a way that makes it less likely to break into millions of very sharp pieces when it breaks.
Most of the time, this type of glass can handle temperatures in an oven that are higher than 450°F. This makes it perfect for crisping food in an air fryer.
Silicone
Is it plastic? Is it made of plastic? It doesn’t matter. Using silicone in an air fryer is completely safe. In fact, you can get baking pans and liners made of silicone for your air fryer. Best of all, you don’t need to grease the silicone mold because it doesn’t stick on its own.
Even though it can handle heat, silicone has a very low thermal transfer level. This means that it spreads heat much more slowly, so cooking food in a silicone baking dish can take several minutes longer.
This won’t be a problem if you make cupcakes and muffins in silicone pans and reheat single-serving casseroles in the same way.
Pans To Avoid In An Air Fryer
Non-Stick Pans With A Fragile Coating
Some non-stick pans have a coating that can’t handle high temperatures. Air fryers produce a lot of heat, and if you use a nonstick pan with a thin coating, it can break down and let dangerous chemicals into your food.
Also, the layer could come off and get into your food, which would change both the taste and the safety of your food.
Pans With Wooden Or Plastic Handles
Air fryers work by circulating hot air in a small area. Pans with wooden or plastic handles. Pans with wooden or plastic handles can’t handle these high temperatures and may melt or bend, making the pan useless and possibly dangerous.
Irregularly Shaped Pans
Air fryers can cook a lot of different things, but they have a particular cooking space that is made to help air flow. If your pan is too big or has an odd shape, it could block the airflow and make your food cook unevenly, with undercooked or overdone parts.
Pans With High Sidewalls
Air fryers need good air movement to cook food evenly. High-sided pans can get in the way of this movement, so the hot air can’t reach all parts of your dish. This can make the food cook unevenly and not taste as good as it could.
Paper Cupcake Molds
Even though it’s safe to bake cupcakes in paper shapes in an oven, it’s not a good idea to do so in an air fryer. Technically, it is safe to bake cupcake cups made of paper in an air fryer, but because they are so close to the heating coil, it is possible that they will catch fire. So, use plastic instead of paper cups for muffins.
Teflon
This might seem like a contradiction since the inside of an air fryer’s food basket or grill/pan device is coated with Teflon.
But most people don’t think that Teflon is safe for the oven because it can become poisonous when exposed to very high heat (around 530°F).
Even though most air fryers have a maximum cooking temperature of 400°F, you shouldn’t put your Teflon pan so close to the hot coil of an air fryer because you could damage it.
Use plastic baking dishes or lightly oil glass bakeware if you want a surface that won’t stick to the food you’re baking.
Thanks for reading. I hope you find it helpful.