The air fryer has quietly become the hardest-working appliance in the modern kitchen, and for good reason. It delivers the shattering crisp of deep frying with a fraction of the oil, preheats in minutes instead of a half hour, and won't turn your kitchen into a sauna on a hot evening. If yours has been living life as a glorified french-fry machine, you're leaving a lot of crispy potential on the table.
Here you'll find every air fryer recipe in The Measuring Cup collection: golden french fries, buffalo-ready chicken wings, flaky salmon fillets, caramelized roasted vegetables, and Brussels sprouts with crackly, charred edges. Each recipe includes exact temperatures and timings for a standard 5–6 quart basket air fryer, plus the small technique tweaks — shaking the basket, preheating properly, and never overcrowding — that separate "pretty good" from genuinely restaurant-quality.
Air frying is faster and more forgiving than most people expect. Nearly every dish here lands on the table in 20 to 30 minutes with a single appliance to clean. Because hot air circulates so efficiently, lean proteins and vegetables crisp beautifully with just a light spray of oil — which makes the air fryer a genuinely useful tool whether you're feeding a crowd or trying to eat a little lighter.
Bookmark this hub as your starting point whenever you want something crisp, golden, and fast. New air fryer recipes are added to this page as we develop and test them.
Crispy golden fries with fluffy interiors — just a tablespoon of oil and your air fryer.
Why we love it: The classic that made air fryers famous — fluffy inside, shatteringly crisp outside, with a fraction of the oil.
Get the recipe →Crispy-skinned wings with juicy meat — faster than the oven and no deep fryer required.
Why we love it: Buffalo-ready wings with crackly, blistered skin and juicy meat — no deep fryer required.
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Tender, flaky salmon fillets with a garlic-herb crust — ready in 10 minutes, from fresh or frozen.
Why we love it: Flaky, buttery salmon fillets in about 15 minutes, with a perfectly bronzed top.
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A colorful medley of caramelized vegetables — crisp-tender in half the time of oven roasting.
Why we love it: A rainbow of vegetables caramelized by rapid convection heat — your fastest, easiest side dish.
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Crispy, caramelized Brussels sprouts with a tangy balsamic glaze — the air fryer gives you those irresistible crispy leaves in minutes.
Why we love it: The crispiest Brussels sprouts you'll ever make, with tender centers and deeply charred edges.
Get the recipe →Almost anything you'd bake, roast, or deep fry — often faster and with less oil. Air fryers excel at anything you want crispy: french fries, chicken wings, Brussels sprouts, and roasted vegetables are the classics. They also do a great job with proteins like salmon and chicken thighs, and even reheating leftovers (pizza, fried foods) so they taste freshly made. The one rule is not to overcrowd the basket, since air needs room to circulate.
Yes — a quick 2–3 minute preheat makes a real difference for crisp results. Air fryers heat up much faster than a conventional oven, so the wait is minimal, but starting with a hot basket means food begins crisping immediately instead of steaming for the first few minutes. Most of our recipes include preheating in the timing.
They work on the same principle — a fan circulates hot air — but an air fryer's smaller chamber concentrates that airflow much more intensely around the food, so it crisps faster and more aggressively. In practice this means you can often cut cook time by 20–30% versus a conventional oven and get a deeper, more even browning with less oil.
It can be. Because the air fryer crisps with circulating hot air rather than a bath of oil, you typically use a small fraction of the fat of deep frying — often just a light spray. For dishes like french fries and chicken wings, that can mean significantly fewer calories and less fat while keeping the texture you crave. It's not magic — the food is still what it is — but it's a genuinely useful tool for lighter cooking.
