Took me 45 minutes to figure out my air fryer's toast setting

I kept burning my toast in this thing. Every slice came out like charcoal on the bottom and soft on top. Turns out I was piling the bread right on the basket instead of using the little rack that came with it. I found the rack buried in the bottom of a drawer after 3 weeks of frustration. Now I set it to 350 for 4 minutes and it comes out golden brown. Anyone else miss obvious stuff with their air fryer at first?

3 comments

3 Comments

graygonzalez1mo agoMost Upvoted

ngl I feel this so hard. I went a solid month just tossing stuff in the basket and wondering why everything was either raw or burnt. Then I realized I had the little rack too but was using it as a trivet for hot pans. Now I swear by preheating the air fryer for 2 minutes before putting anything in. It makes a huge difference for getting even browning. Also flip your toast halfway through if you want both sides cooked right. Seriously the air fryer is just a tiny convection oven you gotta treat it like one.

alexw751mo ago

Gotta disagree with @graygonzalez on this one. Preheating an air fryer for two minutes is just wasting electricity for zero gain. The whole point of these things is they heat up fast, so by the time you toss food in and close the basket, it's already hot enough to cook. And flipping toast halfway through? That's just overcomplicating something that takes three minutes total. Air fryers are not convection ovens, they're more like space heaters with a fan. That's why they work better for things like frozen fries or chicken nuggets where uneven cooking doesn't matter as much. If you need perfect browning on both sides of a sandwich, use a pan. But for everyday stuff, just dump it in and let the air fryer do its thing. All that extra fuss defeats the whole reason people buy these.

troyreed1mo ago

Preheating is literally the difference between soggy and crispy, and flipping toast isn't overcomplicating it, it's just common sense. If you don't wanna do the bare minimum to get good results, maybe just microwave everything.