My dad and I both like to use our air fryers, but we both normally use the aerosol sprays with olive oil in them, something like this
But I read some comments that the contents in the spray bottles can damage the air fryer basket, and that you should use an oil mister instead.
Any truth to this?
Cooking spray is an oil mister.
Avoid: Conventional canned or pressurized propellant oil sprays or oil pump sprays with propellants. Propellant pumps and sprays have chemicals added to them, which isn’t ideal for your health. Also, propellant oils have been known to make the lining peel off your basket when cooked at high temperatures. Folks in our air fryer club and air fryer world facebook groups have shown how the lining of their basket peeling from the propellant sprays.
This seems to be common on a number of sites so I don’t think it’s a crackpot thing.
Wow , first I’ve heard of this. I use a canola oil spray when air frying certain things.
ETA: my basket is pristine
I looked around and noted some sprays are propellant free(air pressure). I also wonder if spraying food vs. spraying the basket makes a difference.
We started with an “egg” style fryer and used spray to keep food from sticking. Now we have a “toaster oven” style and we still use spray.
The egg is hard to clean. Really hot water etc. and that oil still doesn’t want to come off. With the toaster oven I used oven cleaner, got better results. But I have no idea how to get the “ceiling” of it clean and I can see the build up.
Up until recently I was unable to get the mesh trays and metal rack clean. The mesh especially had cooked on particles and greasy residue, looked black. Then I used an old trick. Take a garbage bag, twist tie, oven cleaner, and rubber gloves. Place each tray and rack in bag, spray with oven cleaner. Twist tie closed. Come back at least 4 hours later, overnight is even better.
Remove with rubber gloves (in case cleaner isn’t 100% neutralized). The fumes dissolve the stuff and make a lot of it just rinse right off. I was not totally surprised to see that my copper tray had turned silver. Prior to trying oven cleaner, some had flaked off. The box said it had a “ceramic coating” and the oven cleaner took it off.
If you want to be uber cautious, put some oil in a non-aerosol spray bottle and use that.
I think it’s that some sprays use stuff like dimethyl silicone/polydimethylsiloxane in them, which is a silicone oil. It’s used as an anti-foaming agent and as a surface tension modifier, so that when the oil comes out of the spray nozzle, it doesn’t foam up.
Example: Crisco cooking spray.
I can see how something like this might either chemically interact with the air fryer basket coating, or possibly make the cooking oil adhere in a way that it wouldn’t otherwise.
So rather than specify not to use cooking sprays without silicone, which would require people to both read the labels AND know what was actually silicone based on the label, it’s easier for manufacturers to just discourage the use of ALL cooking spray.-