Air Fryer

An air fryer is a small convection oven with an aggressive fan, and it does exactly one thing well: it drives moisture off a surface fast enough to brown it before the inside overcooks.
That makes it the precise inverse of a slow cooker. Where a slow cooker needs collagen and hours, an air fryer needs lean protein and minutes. The cuts that turn to sawdust over eight hours on low are the same cuts that come out of a basket at their best. Pork tenderloin, chicken breast, thin chops, fish, and almost every vegetable worth roasting.
Why times here will not match your machine exactly
Air fryer wattage varies enough between models to shift a tray of chicken wings by five minutes, and basket capacity changes how much air actually circulates. A crowded basket steams instead of crisping, which is the single most common reason a recipe disappoints. Cook in batches with space between pieces, even when it feels inefficient.
Every time published here is the time observed in one specific machine, and where a different size would meaningfully change the result, that is flagged in the recipe. Treat the first run of any recipe as calibration for your own basket.
What works
Chicken wings are the flagship, and they genuinely rival deep frying if you dry the skin thoroughly first. Fries and cauliflower both benefit from a light coat of oil and a shake halfway through. Baked potatoes come out with better skin than an oven produces, in half the time. Pork chops want thickness, at least an inch, or they dry before they colour. Salmon is fast enough that thirty seconds matters.
Three habits worth building
Dry the surface. Moisture is the enemy of browning. Pat everything down with paper towel before it goes in.
Preheat. Two or three minutes. Food placed in a cold basket spends its first minutes steaming.
Do not overfill. One layer, gaps between pieces. Two batches beat one crowded one every time.
Recipes below are sorted by what goes in the basket, with temperatures, times, and the internal target where it matters.