Equipment

Do I Need to Flip My Food When Air Frying?

Air fryers are convection ovens, so they circulate hot air around your food. Do you really need to mess with it?
By

Published July 10, 2023.

Dear Gear Heads,

I've read that I need to flip my food when I'm air frying. That seems counterintuitive. Doesn't the hot air already circulate around the food?

Kevin

Air fryers are convenient, efficient, easy to clean, and even fun to use (if you buy the right model). I’ve spent months testing them, during which I went from an air-fryer skeptic to a frequent user.

I love our recipes specifically designed for air fryers, including chicken Parmesan, homemade french fries, and smoky and sweet pork tenderloin.

One question I’ve often heard: Why is it necessary to flip or agitate food when air frying? It may sound like a silly question, but it’s a legitimate one.

Air fryers are essentially small convection ovens; this means that they include fans that circulate hot air around the food, hopefully cooking it evenly. If this circulation is working the way it’s supposed to, shouldn't you be able to set your air fryer and forget about it until your food is cooked?

Sign up for the Notes from the Test Kitchen newsletter

Our favorite tips and recipes, enjoyed by 2 million+ subscribers!

Well, no.

I took my own air-fryer knowledge and combined it with some expertise from our senior science research editor, and here are the facts:

  • Air fryer’s fans do circulate hot air around the food, but air-fryer baskets are pretty confined spaces—there’s not a ton of real estate for air to move that freely.
  • The heating elements—which are usually positioned above the fry basket—are quite powerful. This means that even though hot air is circulating and cooking the food on every side, there’s also direct heat radiating from a central location above the food. That heat is more powerful, and it’s cooking the top of the food faster.
  • Furthermore, the tray or fry basket that the food is sitting on also blocks some of the hot air from cooking the undersides.
Equipment Review

The Best Air Fryers

We cooked thousands of french fries and more than 50 pounds of chicken to answer one question: Which air fryer reigns supreme?
See Our Winner

Even if your air fryer has top-notch air circulation from its fan, you need to give most larger pieces of food (such as pork chops, burgers, and chicken cutlets) a turn about halfway through cooking. It’s also best to give most smaller foods (such as cauliflower florets, french fries, or chicken nuggets) a good shake or toss in the middle of the cooking cycle to expose new parts of the food to the heating element.

Even with this necessary turning or shaking, we’ve still found air fryers to be faster than ovens for cooking most foods, among several other advantages. 

Some final notes:

75 Air Fryer Recipes

Healthy Air Fryer

Create healthy and delicious meals with an air fryer! This book contains 75 recipes for everything from breakfast bowls with (air-fryer) roasted fruit to turkey-zucchini meatballs and shrimp with curry noodles.

This is a members' feature.