Is It Safe To Put Aluminum Foil In The Air Fryer?

One of the first things someone will tell you about using a microwave is to never, ever put any sort of metal inside, including aluminum foil. Instead of the delicious food you were trying to cook, all you'll get is a sparking, fiery mess for your trouble. What about an air fryer, though? It has a similar interface and heat-and-eat principle, so will aluminum foil cause the same problems?

In short, no. Aluminum foil is perfectly safe to use in an air fryer and will not start fires like it would in a microwave. The reason microwaves can't handle metal is because they work by bombarding food with electromagnetic waves aptly called microwaves. The microwaves inside the appliance are absorbed into water particles and excite them in order to heat the food. Metal has no moisture and can't absorb the microwaves, and in the case of thin metal like aluminum foil with lots of creases, they bounce around and create an electrical charge instead; thus the spark show.

Meanwhile, air fryers work by heating air using a heating element and circulating it throughout the inner chamber, like a mini convection oven. There are no microwaves involved, so when you cook something like garlic bread in the air fryer with a bit of foil, there's nothing to bounce off of the foil and create all those sparks.

Just because aluminum foil won't start a fire doesn't mean you can't make mistakes with it when using your air fryer. For starters, always put food on top of the foil to weigh it down. Otherwise, the hot air circulating inside the fryer can suck the foil up into the heating element. Also, never put any acidic food on foil, like tomatoes or citrus fruit, as this can break down the foil and cause aluminum to leach into your food.

Don't wrap your air-fried food in foil. Doing this serves little purpose besides blocking heated air from getting to food, so your appliance can't cook effectively. Next time you bake a potato in the air fryer, skip the foil as you would with oven-baked potatoes. The only real reason to use foil in an air fryer is to catch grease or crumbs and make cleanup easier.

On that note, ensure your foil doesn't impede air flow inside the air fryer. Otherwise, your food won't cook evenly and may take longer. More specifically, don't line the bottom of the air fryer with it, only the pan you're cooking the food on.