Essential Accessories for Air Fryer Owners to Get More Out of Every Meal

An air fryer doesn’t need much to work well, but a few cheap accessories make cleanup faster and expand what you can actually cook in it. Most air fryer owners end up using only three to five accessories regularly, so it’s worth starting small rather than buying a giant kit of things you’ll never touch.

Perforated Parchment Liners: Buy These First

This is the single most recommended air fryer accessory across nearly every buying guide, and for good reason. Perforated Air Fryer Parchment Liners line the basket so food doesn’t stick and cleanup takes seconds instead of scrubbing, while the perforations let hot air circulate the way regular parchment paper (which blocks airflow) can’t. One safety note worth repeating: never preheat an air fryer with a liner inside and no food weighing it down, since it can get pulled up into the heating element.

Reusable Silicone Liners for Daily Cooking

If you use your air fryer daily, a reusable option saves money over disposable parchment long-term. Silicone Air Fryer Liners protect the basket coating and make wipe-down cleanup even faster than parchment, at the cost of slightly less crisp results than parchment or no liner at all — a reasonable trade-off if cleanup speed matters more than maximum crispness.

Multi-Level Racks for Cooking More at Once

For families or anyone tired of doing multiple batches, a Air Fryer Multi-Level Rack stacks food on two tiers, letting you cook more volume in a single run. It works best for items that don’t need direct basket contact, like reheating, toasting, or cooking foods that are already partially cooked.

An Oil Sprayer for Better Texture

A fine-mist Oil Mister Sprayer for Air Fryer gives you an even, light coat of oil that helps achieve a crisper exterior on foods like homemade fries or breaded items, without drenching them the way pouring oil from a bottle tends to. It’s a small accessory that noticeably improves results on anything you want genuinely crispy rather than just hot.

Silicone-Tipped Tongs for Safe Handling

Metal tongs can scratch nonstick basket coatings over time, so a set of Silicone-Tipped Kitchen Tongs is worth the small cost to protect your basket’s lifespan, especially if you’re flipping food mid-cook regularly.

A Cake or Baking Pan for More Versatility

Air fryers can bake small items surprisingly well — mini cakes, frittatas, even bread — but need a pan sized to fit the basket. An Air Fryer Cake Baking Pan Set opens up this use case without needing a second small appliance for occasional baking.

Start Minimal, Add as Needed

The realistic starter kit is parchment or silicone liners plus an oil sprayer — that combination alone solves the two most common air fryer complaints (sticking and dry, unevenly crisped food). Racks, tongs, and baking pans are worth adding only once you find yourself wanting to cook more volume or more variety than the basic basket allows.

Sizing Accessories to Your Specific Basket

Air fryer baskets vary a lot in both shape and dimensions between brands, so a rack, pan, or liner sized for one model won’t necessarily fit another. Check the diameter and depth of your basket against the accessory’s listed measurements before ordering, especially for rigid items like racks and baking pans that can’t flex to fit the way a liner can. A liner or rack that’s even slightly oversized can block airflow around the edges, which defeats the point of air frying in the first place.

Cleaning the Accessories Themselves

Reusable silicone liners and racks are typically dishwasher-safe, but it’s worth hand-washing items with fine mesh or small gaps, like certain racks, since food debris can get trapped in spots a dishwasher cycle misses. Letting racks and pans air dry completely before stacking them away prevents the same moisture-related issues that affect any metal cookware, and periodically checking liners for tears or thinning spots keeps you from accidentally reintroducing the sticking problem they were bought to solve.

A Note on Preheating Safety

It’s worth repeating this one because it’s an easy habit to form by accident: never run an empty basket preheat cycle with a loose liner, parchment sheet, or anything lightweight sitting inside unweighted. The strong airflow that makes an air fryer work can lift a light liner directly into the heating element, which is a fire risk, not just an inconvenience. Weighing the liner down with food, or simply adding it after preheating rather than before, avoids this entirely.

Matching Accessories to How Often You Cook

Someone using an air fryer almost daily gets real, repeated value from the full set covered here, since the time saved on cleanup and the extra flexibility of racks and pans compounds over dozens of uses a month. Someone using it once or twice a week is better served sticking with just liners and an oil sprayer — the other accessories simply won’t earn back their storage space at that frequency, and it’s fine to revisit the question later if your usage picks up.

The Bottom Line

You don’t need a 15-piece accessory kit to get real value out of an air fryer. Liners and an oil sprayer solve the most common frustrations immediately, and the rest of the accessories are worth adding one at a time, based on what your actual cooking habits show you need.