This air fryer mistake is the worst thing you can do to your appliance – and I’ve been doing it for years

As T3’s Home Editor, I’ve tested many different appliances over the years, including the best air fryers. But I recently found out that I’ve been making a common mistake that could be damaging my air fryer – and it’s likely that you’ve made the same mistake too.

The beauty of air fryers is that they use little to no oil. Instead, the mini ovens work by rapidly circulating hot air around its baskets or chamber rather than the food being dunked in oil. This results in food with a crispy exterior and a moist interior, that’s been made in a much healthier way.

Despite air fryers not needing oil to cook your food, it always helps to put a little bit in the baskets to prevent your food from sticking and to reduce the amount of mess you need to clean-up. Most people use cooking oil sprays to avoid using too much oil, but this turns out to be one of the biggest mistakes you could make when using your air fryer – and I’ve been doing it for years!

Why you should never use oil sprays in your air fryer

According to small appliance expert from AO.com, Isabella Forgione, misusing oil and cooking sprays is detrimental to your air fryer. This is mainly due to the contents of the oil spray that you’re using as it could be damaging the non-stick coating of your air fryer baskets.

Oil sprays typically contain oil, an emulsifier and a propellant. How the sprays work is the oil – which could be olive, canola or vegetable – and the propellant mixes together in the bottle, with the latter helping to evenly distribute and spray the oil. An emulsifier like lecithin or occasionally an anti-foaming agent is used in the bottle to keep the oil and propellant combined.

How oil sprays can affect your air fryer is through its lecithin ingredient. Oil sprays have low smoke points and lecithin can build up in your air fryer over time, which leaves the basket or drawer feeling very sticky – even if you regularly clean your air fryer. This stickiness can be hard to clean off and it can affect the coating of your air fryer basket, which if it’s non-stick like most air fryer drawers are, it rules them useless.

In general, you don’t really need to be using oil in your air fryer anyway, due to how an air fryer works. To avoid adding oil but still minimising clean-up, many people use silicone baskets within the main air fryer compartment so the mess is contained to the silicone which is much easier to clean.

Forgione from AO also recommends spraying oils directly to your food before you put it in your air fryer as this reduces any damage or mess to your air fryer and keeps the amount of oil spray touching your air fryer to a minimum.

For more tips on how to look after your air fryer, see these common air fryer mistakes that we’ve done so you don’t have to.