1. Wet-Battered Foods
Any items with a wet batter, such as beer-battered fish or tempura vegetables, will not cook well in the air fryer. When wet battered foods are deep-fried, the scorching hot oil “sets” the batter onto the item – the batter crisps and puffs up to create that deliciously crunchy coating. In an air fryer, none of that chemistry happens.
Air fryers aren’t meant to handle wet batter or coating, regardless of what the name might suggest. Inside a dry air fryer, there isn’t anything to set the wet batter. Instead, traditional batter will just drip off while the food cooks.
Your air fryer’s powerful fan is simply going to blow all that batter around, splattering the inside of the machine with difficult-to-clean gunk. Additionally, the excess batter can drip into the bottom of the air fryer and even begin to burn. The fix, if you still want a crispy coating, is dry breading like breadcrumbs or cornmeal, which hold their shape under circulating hot air.
2. Cheese (on Its Own)
Just like a wet batter can make a big mess in your air fryer, so can cheese. That’s because cheese melts easily. Instead of crisping up in the air fryer, most cheese will simply melt and drip into the bottom of the machine, potentially burning, smoking, and giving you an all-around huge mess to clean up.
An air fryer is actually not a deep fryer. When you make something like a mozzarella stick in a deep fryer, an instant outer crust is formed. In an air fryer, this does not happen, and you’ll instead end up with a gooey, cheesy mess.
The problem is cheese can quickly melt and burn in the high temperatures of an air fryer, resulting in a stringy mess. Frozen mozzarella sticks are fine, but fresh cheese is unfortunately a no-no. The distinction is important: the freezing process sets the outer coating, which is why pre-frozen products hold together while fresh ones don’t.
3. Leafy Greens
Leafy greens, such as curly kale, fall short in the air fryer because of the high-speed hot air. The light and airy greens will fly all around the air fryer basket, leaving you with unevenly cooked greens. This isn’t just a texture problem. It’s a safety concern too.
Air fryers are constantly blasting air around the chamber, so anything that could get caught in a breeze is bound to go flying. Not only will those greens not cook evenly, they could get stuck on the element and create a fire hazard.
When choosing vegetables to cook in the air fryer, opt for those that hold some weight, like broccoli and zucchini. Kale chips may also be successful if you coat the kale in enough oil to weigh the leaves down. Ultimately, experts say that frozen veggies are the way to go when it comes to air fryers because they retain more moisture from the ice.
4. Raw Rice and Grains
Grains such as rice and pasta can crisp nicely in an air fryer, but they have to be cooked on the stove top first. Air fryers are intended to dry cook food, so trying to cook something that needs to be immersed in water during the cooking process won’t work. Even with an insert that allows you to place water inside the air fryer, the fan will never get hot enough to boil the water and successfully cook your grains.
Cooking rice or other grains in an air fryer is not recommended. They require water or broth for proper absorption and tender cooking, which an air fryer, with its hot air circulation, cannot provide. Your rice would be undercooked and the water could damage the machine.
You should initially cook the rice on a stove top, and then you can crisp it afterwards in an air fryer. That’s the one workaround that actually makes sense: use the air fryer as a finishing tool, not as the primary cooking method for grains.
5. Popcorn
Popcorn doesn’t just need heat. It needs steady, concentrated heat to build pressure inside each kernel until it pops. Air fryers don’t deliver that kind of environment. Instead, they circulate hot air rapidly, which could lead to a few problems.
The biggest risk is that the kernels come into contact with the heating element: popcorn is light and is moved by the hot air flow, so it can come into direct contact with the heating element and cause damage to the appliance, burns, and intense smoke that can also pose a fire risk.
Even though the appliance will technically cook the popcorn, it’s highly likely that some pieces will lodge themselves into the air fryer’s heating element after they pop, causing them to smoke and burn. Another major issue is that some uncooked kernels may ricochet against the air fryer’s internal fan, causing a deeply unpleasant sound and potential damage to the machine. The stovetop or a dedicated popcorn maker remains the clear choice here.
6. Bacon
Simply put: the uneven cuts and fattiness are a bad combination. It’s very difficult to cook a rasher of bacon evenly in an air fryer, and they’re so fatty that they’ll inevitably spit all over the place. The appeal is understandable – no grease splatters on the stovetop, easy cleanup – but the reality rarely matches the expectation.
Bacon is a fatty food. When it is cooked in an air fryer, the fat can drip down and cause smoke or splatter. This can make the bacon difficult to cook evenly, and it can also produce a lot of smoke and odours.
Air fryers may be better for you than deep fryers, but they’re only as healthy as the food you put inside. They won’t magically remove the saturated fat from bacon or the trans fats from a bag of processed chicken wings. For bacon specifically, a cast iron pan or oven tray gives you far more control over both the fat rendering and the final crispness.
The Acrylamide Factor: A Note on Burnt Foods
Air-frying equipment is not known to cause cancer, but the process of air frying does result in the formation of certain compounds, like acrylamide, that are linked to cancer development. This is worth understanding, especially when cooking starchy foods at high heat.
Acrylamide is formed when foods are heated to temperatures above 120 degrees Celsius. During the heating process, a series of chemical reactions involving sugars and amino acids contained in food results in the formation of acrylamide. Foods that are high in carbohydrates, such as potato chips, french fries, and baked goods contain the highest levels of acrylamide.
A 2024 study found that air-fried potatoes contained slightly more acrylamide than deep-fried or oven-fried potatoes. This doesn’t make the air fryer dangerous in normal use, but it does reinforce the case for not over-cooking foods or pushing temperatures beyond what’s needed. Charred results aren’t a quirky feature – they’re a signal to adjust.
Why These Foods Fail: The Physics Behind It
An air fryer is a countertop kitchen appliance that circulates hot air at a very high speed, set to a temperature of your choosing – similar to a convection oven. That rapid-air mechanism is what makes it so effective for firm, dry-surface foods.
The air fryer’s convection-style of cooking can make some items disappointingly dry. Other foods cook unevenly in the air fryer, stick to the basket, or just create a big mess. These aren’t random failures. They follow predictably from the physics: hot, fast-moving air rewards solid surfaces and punishes anything wet, light, or liquid.
Despite the ingenuity of the device, you’ll want to avoid using an air fryer for some specific foods out there. Results may vary, but some foods will dry instead of fry, overcook, or just create a mess. Knowing the difference between what the machine excels at and where it genuinely struggles is what separates a good cook from a frustrated one.
What You Should Cook Instead
A wide variety of foods can be cooked or heated in air fryers such as chicken nuggets, meatballs, pork chops, chicken wings and more. Air fryers can be used for baking, roasting and reheating food without the food becoming soggy. The machine is genuinely excellent at these tasks.
Air fryers offer a healthier alternative for preparing crispy foods compared to deep frying. This is because air fryers require less oil to achieve the same texture. For proteins, frozen foods, and sturdy vegetables, the air fryer consistently delivers. The key is matching the food to the method rather than treating the appliance as a universal solution.
Using an air fryer, which requires about a tablespoon of oil, may cut calories that you’d normally get from deep frying foods by up to 80%. That’s a significant benefit – just not one that extends to every single ingredient in your kitchen.
Appliance Safety and Proper Maintenance
This kitchen appliance can be damaged easily if instructions and guidelines are not adhered to, so it is always best to avoid those foods that are unfit for it. That’s a practical point many people overlook. Cooking the wrong foods doesn’t just ruin dinner – it can shorten the life of the appliance or create genuine hazards.
There’s a strong current created by the heating fans, which can blow kernels around the machine and cause irreversible damage if they get into the wrong place. Chemicals added to commercial spray oils cause damage to your air fryer, since they contain an emulsifier called lecithin, which slowly breaks down the coating on your air fryer. This risks the release of toxic chemicals into your food.
Air fryers generally don’t have a lot of room inside. Overcrowding the appliance can prevent enough air circulation to properly cook the food. When air frying a large amount of food, it may be best to do so in batches rather than all at once. Crowding is a separate but equally common mistake that compromises results even for foods that are otherwise well-suited to the method.
The Verdict: Know Your Tool
The air fryer is a genuinely useful kitchen appliance, but it has specific strengths and real blind spots. Understanding both makes you a better cook and keeps the machine running longer. The six foods listed here – wet batters, loose cheese, leafy greens, raw grains, popcorn, and bacon – fail for consistent, well-documented reasons, not random bad luck.
Preparing cheesy dishes, wet-breaded food items, or things like sauce-drenched chicken wings in an air fryer can lead to a messy basket or tray and potentially damage the appliance. These are better off being cooked in an oven or a pan. Knowing when to reach for a different tool is the mark of someone who actually understands their kitchen.
The air fryer isn’t flawed in any fundamental sense. It just has a particular operating logic, and some foods sit outside of it. Work with that, not against it, and the appliance earns its counter space every single time.
