Air Fryer Times and Temperatures (2026): The Complete Australian Chart

The air fryer is the most-owned kitchen appliance in Australia that nobody was given instructions for. Most come with a one-page leaflet, a few presets, and no real chart — so people guess, burn things, and end up using it for frozen chips and nothing else.

This is the chart. Times and temperatures for around fifty foods in Celsius, drawn from the Philips and Ninja manuals and Kmart’s own presets, with the disagreements between manufacturers shown rather than averaged away. Plus the answers to the questions people actually search — can you put foil in it, do you need to preheat, what does it cost to run, and how do you convert an oven recipe — and ten recipes worth cooking.

The complete time and temperature chart

Every air fryer is slightly different, so treat these as a starting point and check a few minutes early the first time you cook something. Times assume a standard basket air fryer with food in a single layer — the most common reason food comes out pale and soggy is that the basket was overloaded.

Where a row is marked consensus, no manufacturer publishes a figure for that food and the time comes from general practice — check those ones especially carefully.

A meat thermometer is about $15 and turns most of this from guesswork into certainty. The Food Safety Information Council’s targets: poultry and sausages 75°C, pork 70°C, fish 63°C, beef and lamb 63°C for medium rare and 71°C for medium.

Converting an oven recipe

An air fryer is a small fan-forced oven with the fan very close to the food. That means it runs hotter than the dial suggests and cooks faster.

• Drop the temperature. Ninja’s manual says reduce by 25°F, which is about 15°C. In practice 20°C is a safer starting point for anything that browns quickly.
• Cut the time by roughly a fifth, then check early. Ninja doesn’t publish a time reduction; Tefal just says “reduce the cooking times and temperature”. Twenty per cent is the working rule most people land on.
• Halve the quantity or cook in batches. This is the real constraint — a tray of vegetables that fits an oven will need two or three rounds in a basket.

Do you need to preheat? The manufacturers disagree

This is the most confidently-stated wrong answer on the internet, in both directions. Here is what the manufacturers actually say:

CHOICE’s kitchen expert Fiona Mair gives the most useful version, which is that it depends on what you’re cooking. Not preheating is the number one mistake she sees with fresh food — meat, fish, vegetables, potatoes — because they need to hit a hot surface at the start. For frozen and pre-cooked items it makes no real difference.

The practical rule: preheat 3 minutes for anything fresh, skip it for anything frozen. And follow whichever your own manual says, since the published times are built around it.

Can you put foil in an air fryer?

This is one of the most-searched air fryer questions in Australia, and the honest answer is that the two biggest manufacturers give opposite advice. Anyone telling you it’s simply fine, or simply forbidden, is quoting one brand and ignoring the other.

What should never go in

• Wet batter. Tempura, beer batter, anything that drips. As CHOICE puts it, “the coating will simply slip through the basket and you’ll end up with a disappointing mess”. Use flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, and press the crumbs on firmly.
• Loose light food. Bare leafy greens and unweighted paper get blown into the element. Philips is blunt: “never use light ingredients”.
• Oil in the pan. Both Philips and Ninja are explicit — do not fill the pan with oil, it is a fire hazard. An air fryer is not a deep fryer.
• Too much oil generally. About one tablespoon per kilo of fresh food. Frozen food needs none, because it’s already been oiled.
• An overfilled basket. The most common mistake of all. CHOICE: overfilling “causes uneven cooking and browning, as well as uncooked soggy areas”. Cook two batches instead.
• Cheese straight on the basket. It melts through the holes, bakes onto the element tray and ruins the coating. Use a lined tray with food on it.
• Liquid dishes. Tefal: “the air fryer is not suitable for liquid based dishes.”
• Salt during cooking. Tefal specifically warns that salting mid-cook scratches and pits the coating. Salt at the end.
• Metal utensils and steel wool. Both wreck the non-stick.

On aerosol oil sprays: they’re widely blamed for stripping non-stick coatings, and it’s plausible, but no manufacturer or Australian consumer body says so — and CHOICE actively recommends using an oil spray for light, even coverage. Treat it as a caution rather than a rule, and if you’re worried, use a refillable pump bottle with plain oil.

Where to put it, and how to clean it

Philips gives a hard number: at least 10cm clear at the back, the sides and above, and nothing on top. CHOICE puts it more memorably — an air fryer is a small fan-forced oven, so “always allow airflow around your appliance, never put it into a cavity.”

Do not run it under a closed overhead cupboard. The exhaust is superheated, moist air; it damages cabinetry, leaves condensation on the wall behind, and recirculating it back into the intake makes the unit overheat.

Clean it after every single use — all three of Philips, Ninja and Tefal say so. CHOICE explains why: leftover residue burns next time, old oil smokes, “it could even pose a fire hazard”. It’s easiest while still warm.

• Dishwasher? Philips and Ninja say yes for the basket and crisper plate. Tefal says hand-wash to prolong its life. Check your own manual.
• Baked-on grease: soak in hot soapy water for 10–15 minutes, then a non-abrasive sponge. Never a scourer.
• The heating element gets greasy and is the bit everyone forgets. Unplug, let it cool, and use a soft brush — never steel wire, which strips its coating.
• Never immerse the main unit. Damp cloth only.
• Lingering smells: Tefal suggests rubbing the basket with a cut lemon, then rinsing.
• Lower the basket in straight, not at an angle — angling it is what chips the coating near the rim.

If your coating does chip, Philips says the materials are food-safe and small spots are not harmful. On the broader question, CHOICE’s position on the PFAS/PTFE coatings used in most baskets is honest and worth quoting rather than paraphrasing: “it is unclear if migration of PFAS chemicals in non-stick cookware into food causes harm to human health.” The science is still developing. If it bothers you, glass, ceramic and stainless baskets now exist and CHOICE tests them.

Are air fryers actually healthier?

Partly, and the claim is narrower than the marketing suggests. Philips advertises “up to 90% less fat” and Tefal “99% less added fat” — but read the footnotes. Tefal’s is 700g of chips cooked in 8ml of oil versus deep frying in two litres. These are claims about added oil compared to deep frying, not claims that air-fried food is healthier than oven-baked food.

So: an air fryer is a genuine improvement on a deep fryer, and roughly a wash against an oven. If you cook frozen chips and nuggets in it, you are eating frozen chips and nuggets — the oil is already in the coating. Where it does help is that it makes cooking fresh vegetables, fish and chicken fast and easy enough that you actually do it.

What does an air fryer cost to run?

A typical benchtop air fryer draws 1300 to 1800 watts — Kmart’s 4L is 1300W, its 7L is 1500W. That sounds like a lot, and it is roughly two-thirds of an oven element. The saving comes from the fact that it heats a tiny cavity and finishes much sooner.

CHOICE measured this properly with a smart meter, cooking the same meals in both at 170°C:

CHOICE’s summary: an air fryer uses about half the electricity per hour of an oven at the same temperature, and finishes faster on top of that — so about a third of the cost overall. Over a year, CHOICE puts air fryers at $9 to $51 and ovens at $31 to $65.

For context on the rate: the Victorian Default Offer for 2026–27 sets residential usage between about 26c and 32c per kWh depending on your distributor, and time-of-use peak rates between 4pm and 9pm run 38c to 48c. Cooking dinner at 7pm on a time-of-use plan is the most expensive hour of the day — which is a small extra argument for the appliance that finishes in twenty minutes. If you want to see where cooking sits in your whole bill, our guide to electricity bills in Australia has an estimator.

The one caveat, and CHOICE makes it themselves: if your meal needs three batches in the air fryer, the oven wins. The saving is real for one or two people and evaporates for a household of five.

Buying one in Australia

Kmart dominates this category in Australia, and its prices as at July 2026 are genuinely low:

• One or two people: 3.5–5L is plenty. CHOICE: a large-capacity air fryer is overkill for one.
• Share house of four or five: 5L minimum, and CHOICE specifically recommends a drawer model of 5L or more — enough for a kilo of chips or a 2kg roast.
• Don’t buy on price alone. CHOICE is direct about this: “many models we recommend cost less than a third of the price of the most expensive model we tested.” They’ve also found $300 models that underperformed $60 ones.
• Performance varies by food. CHOICE found models that produced perfect chips but scored poorly on chicken wings. There is no single best.
• Second-hand is fine for the unit, but check the basket coating carefully — a scratched, flaking basket is the one part you can’t easily replace.

Worth knowing about recalls: air fryers have been recalled in large numbers overseas, and while we couldn’t confirm a current Australian air fryer recall, the sensible habit is to check productsafety.gov.au and sign up for its recall alerts. It takes a minute and covers everything else in your kitchen too.

Ten recipes worth owning one for

Costs are per serve at Australian supermarket prices as at July 2026 and assume you own basic spices. Every one of these fits a 5L basket.

Getting more out of it

• It is the best reheater you own. Pizza, chips, roast potatoes, fried chicken, pastry — all come back crisp instead of the soggy result a microwave gives. This alone justifies the bench space.
• Dry the food. Moisture is the enemy of browning. Pat everything dry: chicken skin, chickpeas, potatoes, tofu.
• Single layer, always. If it doesn’t fit in one layer, do two batches. The second batch cooks faster because the machine is already hot.
• Shake more than you think. Every 5 minutes for small items.
• Sauce and salt at the end. Sugar burns; salt pits the coating.
• Cook once, crisp later. Batch-cook in the oven or a pot, then use the air fryer to crisp individual portions through the week. That’s the pattern that pairs best with meal prep — our guide to cheap healthy meals covers the batch-cooking side.
• Toast, in a pinch. 180°C for 3–4 minutes. Lighter is better, for the acrylamide reason above.

And one honest limitation. An air fryer is excellent at anything that wants a dry, crisp surface, and useless at anything wet — curries, soups, stews, rice, pasta. For a student kitchen, the appliance that handles those is a rice cooker or a slow cooker, and if you’re choosing your first one, a $24 slow cooker does more for batch cooking than an air fryer does. The ideal is one of each.

Frequently asked questions