When I first saw everyone talking about air fryers a few years ago, I thought it was just a fad. I didn’t want to get any more small appliances unless it was absolutely necessary as I kind of hate how cluttered my kitchen gets already.
But, I LOVE my air fryer. In fact, we love and use it so much that this year we upgraded to a double air fryer so we could fit more in it and use it more often.
I would say we use our air fryer almost as much as we use our oven, and in fact, some weeks we use our air fryer more.
Given my love of air fried foods, I thought I would share a big round up of my favorite recipes, as well as just frozen foods and other random things I air fry. This is what I use ours for most often.
Related: 60 Easy Dinner Recipes, 40 Easy 30-Minute Dinner Ideas and Most Popular Recipes.
One of the main things I use it for are quick lunches, which are mostly stuff I throw in the air fryer and then put on salads.
This kind of lunch usually takes less than 10 minutes to make, and although it does involve some frozen comfort foods, I throw it over a big bed of salad with balsamic dressing (so at least I’m eating some vegetables too).
The number one frozen food that falls in this category is toasted cheese ravioli. I even shared a recipe for this salad since I make it so often.
Other frozen foods I will air fry to eat with a salad are: popcorn shrimp, chicken potstickers, meatballs, macaroni bites, and sometimes I will air fry a mini frozen pizza.
More Air Fryer Recipes
- Crispy Air Fryer Brussels Sprouts
- Air Fryer Cauliflower
- Air Fryer Green Beans
- Air Fryer Asparagus
- Air Fryer Asparagus
Air Fryer Breakfast Ideas
Breakfast is made super simple with an air fryer as you can easily make crispy hash brown patties (or tater tots if the grocery store is out of hash brown patties).
I also like to air fry veggie sausage patties and toast.
Air Frier Dinner Ideas
I usually put a little more effort into dinners. These are my favorite air fried dinners:
- Air Fried Salmon
- Air Fried Chicken Wings (we make these once a week)
- Air Fryer Steak
- Air Fried Tofu (to go with pineapple fried rice, among other things)
- Air Fryer Chicken
I also love air fried chickpeas, air fried okra, and I’ve even shared how to make air fried pickles. Yum!
Also, leftovers! I will often throw leftovers in the air fryer for a few minutes, as I love how it rewarms things quickly without making them soggy or have weird hot spots (like a microwave can do). The leftovers I reheat most often in our air fryer is pizza. 🙂
I thought I’d share a few air fryers that have great reviews, including the one I use:
White and Gold Air Fryer / Double Air Fryer / Compact Air Fryer / Vortex Air Fryer / Instant Pot Air Fryer / White Air Fryer
What kind of things do you air fry at home? xo, Emma
I was stuck in a rut only making chicken nuggets in the air fryer, more posts like this please!
Hi Emma! I love the fried ravioli idea. It’s probably one of the most cooked items in my air fryer. It can go with salad like you suggest, or pasta. Thanks for sharing!
We LOVE our air fryer! It’s a game changer, especially with making bacon!
Love love air, but my pressure cooker is awesome as well. So this recipe is gonna blow your socks off. BBQue Ribs. Yep that’s what I’m talking about. Oh my
I can take ribs from the freezer to your table in less then an hour as long as you have some in there.
Seasoning is your own what you like.
I take and cut a slab in half so they fit in the cooker frozen or thawed or fresh. I like mine tender and moist so 20 to 30 on the ribs in the cooker then when those are cooked take the ribs and add your favorite or your on sauce on your ribs and both sides cause your gonna wanna lick those well seasoned fresh cooked ribs air fry on both sides till you get the color of your ribs from light to crispy edges.
I use liquid smoke in the pressure cooker and also a dry wood fire rub. So so easy and don’t have to wait hours and hours. Remember seasoning is the best thing you can do for anything you cook. I have also cooked a pork loin in my air fry and meat loaf well. I did that too.
I usually use my air fryer to toast the bread for my breakfast. It will be crispy and I really love it!
I like to fix my version of a Yankee burrito.
I air fry two hotdogs in a small silicone cake pan for six minutes.
Then I take a large flour tortilla and cut it in half.
I put two slices of pepper jack cheese on each half of the tortilla
Roll the hotdog up in the cheese and tortilla and secure with a wooden toothpick
Then I put the two roll ups and a small silicone cake pan and put it in the air fryer for four minutes turn it over for another four minutes. Some of the cheese oozes out into the cake pan but it doesn’t get all over the air fryer so I don’t even have to wash the air fryer.
I’ve just started making roast potatoes in my air fryer, chop large potatoes into 8ths, pat dry with kitchen paper, roll in oil – salt – sprinkle Harissa and also garlic flakes. I place onto alum foil leaving gaps so the air can circulate. About halfway through turn the potato’s gently. Takes about 20 minutes and they come out perfect.
Potato gratin from Aldi cooks up well too – once again on a sheet of alum foil, until cooked.
Cheesy toast – lightly butter top of bread, lay sliced cheese on bread and press slightly (I butter it so the cheese doesn’t fly off when you put it in tha air fryer) – takes about a minute and you have a yummy cheesy toast, sprinkle with pepper. Yum
I just unpacked my 1st AF, the Drew Barrymore Beautiful model. Our little girl just came down with Flu type A, so our Easter plans got altered and now I’m cooking… I saw you mentioned Aldi having something Gratin… do you mean like,, potatoes au gratin I hope?? I’d love to know, esp if it’s something I can cook in my new AF. Are they potatoes, and what section of the store do I find them? There’s an Aldi near me, but I’ve never been in one. If you didn’t me mean potatoes au gratin, what’d ya mean? Would it go with my free Shoprite ham perhaps? Or any ideas what might come out nice in my AF to go with our Ham dinner?? Thanks, appreciate it!
I have Vortex Black air fryer. I love bacon (the best) cooked in af. Have cooked loose hamburger, sausage, chicken cordon blue, steak, fries (another best) chops and much more. Easy to use, easy to clean! Use it every day.😀
Love my air fryer gonna find a square one I have a 4qt round I need a little bigger but use it every day
We have the Big Boss AF and it works great!! It’s a lrgae glass bowl instead of the plastic drawer. You can actually see your food cooking and you can cook multiple things at once because it has two racks and a top extender so yiu can put a whole chicke. In there! Anyway just thought I would suggest it since you didn’t like your other one
I have the red air fryer me and Trinidad my boyfriend, we just love it .we are still experiencing new things with it but we want to get a bigger one. Just love ❤ it.
Preheat 400 degrees for 6 minutes
Throw in a frozen totinos pizza of your choice 400 degrees for 6 minutes. Half way through add your favorite toppings with more cheese and top it off with fresh basil. For the remainder of the time. Its outstanding
Thanks for the great ideas! I love my airfryer and use it daily!
A note from a longtime reader: I don’t have an air fryer, and I’ve been reading ABM since 2012, so lately I feel like there haven’t been many posts for me to read here (because so many posts are about air fryer recipes – i’m sort of being hyperbolic about that one – but also so many blog posts lately seem to be reposts of older content or round ups of things I’ve already read!). Are you guys moving away from daily new content? Just seems like quite a noticeable uptick in recycled posts in the last few months. That’s fine if the podcast is more where you’re focusing – just would be nice to have this acknowledged, I think! I’m still an old-school blog reader more than anything else, so I’ve really noticed the change.
Overall not a fan of the AF. Tried it for over a year and do have a few “go to’s”. Favorite is home fries from scratch. Good for warming up cooked pizza, fried chicken, fish, shrimp, and other foods that don’t do well in the microwave reheated. As far as cooking meats, poultry, and seafood I did a lot of experimenting and in my opinion the convection oven does better , especially when your cooking more than 1 or 2 portions. Biggest complaint is the mess it makes and the smoke/stench it produces. Glad I read this since it’s on my list to give away or trash, which I hate to do.