If you want to adapt a recipe for air-frying, BBC Good Food’s food copy editor Samuel Goldsmith recommends reducing the cooking time by 20%. Whether you want to upgrade to a newer model, or your air-fryer has reached the end of its life, knowing how and where to dispose of your appliance is important to avoid creating more e-waste.

Its controls were intuitive and easy to use – a single knob lets you switch between all the different settings – something our testers found useful. This article was updated in January to include the new tried and tested air fryer health grill from Procook and our new joint runner up, the Salter EK5728 Fuzion Dual Air Fryer. Anything from the size of the cut to the variety of potato can make a difference here, so it’s always good to gauge things halfway through the time. The appliance was ready to fry from cold in just four minutes too, and you can remove the door so cleaning is a doddle.Rather than submerging food in oil, air fryers use very little – in our tests we used one tablespoon of oil as standard – to bake food quickly. Find everything from counter-top appliances, such as the best food processors and best toasters, through to larger white goods like the best microwaves and best dishwashers. Although we struggled to find any real need for the app (setting the air-fryer to go takes very little time), it is useful to be able to check how much time is left from afar and for the bank of Cosori recipes it houses.

Finally, they make fairy cakes, to judge how well the appliance can bake and how evenly air circulates – the better baked and fluffier the cakes, the more efficient the air flow. If you want to know more about popular brand Ninja, our friends at olive magazine have written guides to best Ninja air-fryer and the latest Ninja deals.As we mention above, it’s possible to achieve a similar texture and flavour of traditional fried delights with an air-crisp function for air-fried chips and air-fried roast potatoes using considerably less oil. When we review air-fryers, each model goes through several tests: making chips, roasting chicken, grilling halloumi and aubergine, and – where possible – baking cake, to test all functions.

We found the browning to be a little inconsistent when air-frying salmon and chicken breasts, and our aubergine – while flavoursome – lacked the restaurant-style grill marks we were hoping for.Its grill function didn’t disappoint when it came to grid cooking and, if you like a traybake, cakes are ready in 25 minutes. Air-fryers are generally very versatile, but there are certain ingredients you should avoid air-frying for safety reasons, like popcorn and sauce-based dishes. Hugely versatile, they work by circulating hot air to create a ‘fried’ finish on food, using little to no oil. It comes with a wide, bright touchscreen and five fan speeds, each of which corresponds to a different function.

Fried favourites cooked more healthily may sound a little too good to be true but, thanks to the nifty air fryer, you can serve up classics such as fish and chips using little to no oil. Like our top-scorer, it has two drawers and a sync function, so you can cook two different foods at once, safe in the knowledge they’ll both be ready to eat at the same time.It took a while to roast a chicken but, 45 minutes later, it came out golden and moist, while our fairy cakes were just right. Just like our other winner, this Haier air fryer provided consistently crispy results across the board, making it a great choice for delicious fried feasts without all that oil. We looked at the manuals for each model and followed their directions for cooking temperature, time and the quantity of oil needed. Pick up a copy of Good Housekeeping's brand-new cookbook for even more delicious ideas for using your air fryer —including 75 best-ever recipes for frying, roasting and baking (hello, air fryer chicken parm! The holes around the screws in the handle seemed to be cracking or something and the screws were simply falling out.