This Sunday is Super Bowl 2025, the perfect excuse to cook up all your favorite appetizers to snack on while you watch the big game. And while a lot of us (myself included) have ditched our ovens in favor of the best air fryers to cook up all of the best breaded and fatty foods, there's one area where ovens will win every time: capacity.
Air fryers are great for one or two-person households, sure, but when you've got friends coming over to watch the big game can they really compare to the convenience of throwing everything into your electric range and leaving it to cook? And more importantly, could you even taste the difference?
Well, in the name of science, I conducted an air fryer vs oven experiment on all my favorite Super Bowl appetizers to answer that very question. I made everything from buffalo wings and French fries to mozzarella sticks and onion rings in both the air fryer and the oven — here's what came out on top.
Chicken wings
The wings are my favorite part of any Super Bowl feast, and despite how different the two plates shown above look, I promise I followed the exact same recipe for both. Want to guess which one was cooked in the oven?
You're (probably) right, it was the one on the left.
Both were super tasty, but the chicken wings in the air fryer were significantly crispier than the ones cooked in the oven. They also browned a lot more, which I suspect is a result of the sugars in my buffalo sauce hitting a burning point faster due to the faster air circulation in the air fryer. The wings in the oven might have got to the same level of brownness if I'd left them longer, but while they were still tasty and well-cooked they lacked the crisp finish of the air fried alternatives.
Chicken wings winner: Air fryer
French fries
The first image in the gallery above shows the French fries I cooked in the air fryer. The comparatively anaemic-looking fries on the second image? They're oven-cooked for the same amount of time.
There's no contest, right? The air fried French fries came out significantly tastier than the oven fries. They were crispier, more browned, and more evenly cooked than the ones I put in the oven. In fact, after I took these photos, I put the oven fries in the air fryer for a few minutes to get a more crispy finish.
French fries winner: Air fryer
Onion rings
I also cooked frozen mozzarella sticks and onion rings in both the oven and the air fryer. I was able to space them out a lot more on my oven tray than inside the smaller second air fryer drawer of my Philips 3000, but regardless, the air-fried food came out more browned and crunchy.
In the taste test, I actually preferred the oven-cooked onion rings. As onion rings are small and cook quite fast, it's easy to burn them in the air fryer if you're not keeping a watchful eye. Because I cooked them for the same amount of time in the oven and air fryer, they were a little overdone in the air fryer. So while you could just cook them in the air fryer and take a few minutes off, this is one I'd cook in the oven if I was re-creating this spread. It would also free up some space in my air fryer for more wings and fries!
Onion rings winner: Oven
Mozzarella sticks
As for the mozzarella sticks, I also preferred the ones I cooked in the oven. There's two reasons for this. Firstly, like the onion rings, they're small and can overcook and dry out quite fast, so they were a couple of minutes too browned when I cooked them in the air fryer.
Secondly, anyone who's cooked mozzarella sticks will know that mozzarella is prone to bubble and melt out of the breaded coating and onto the bottom of whatever receptacle you're cooking them on. Two of the ones I cooked in the air fryer did this, whereas all four of my oven mozzarella sticks remained intact.
Mozzarella sticks winner: Oven
Convenience
I split my chicken wings between my air fryer basket (I used the Philips 3000 Series, which is great at cooking meat) and my oven evenly. I'd say you could comfortably get 10 wings in a 5-quart basket, but anything more and you might start to crowd the wings. By contrast, they didn't even take up half of my smart oven's cooking rack. I left some space to add my mozzarella sticks later and added another shelf with my onion rings and french fries on top about 10 minutes after I started cooking the wings.
It's no secret that air fryers are speedier than ovens, but in the spirit of the experiment I added my wings at the exact same time, once the oven and air fryer had pre-heated, and followed the same recipe in both.
The issue came when I needed to cram my other appetizers into the air fryer basket alongside my wings. The Philips 3000 is a dual-basket fryer, but even so, its 9.5-quart capacity was pretty snug and I ended up nestling my fries around the wings while my mozzarella sticks and onion rings cooked in the second, smaller drawer. And when it came to toss my wings in my buffalo sauce for the final five minutes of cooking, I had to then place them on top of the fries to continue cooking.
The oven, by contrast, couldn't have been easier. That's what a huge capacity will get you. Fortunately there was no Big Game playing, because I'd have found the constant re-adjusting of my air fryer drawers more than a little distracting compared to the convenience of the oven.
Winner: Oven
Time
In a time crunch and want to keep appetizers coming out throughout the meal? Cook them in the air fryer, and they're all but guaranteed to cook faster and crisp up more easily.
Air fryers also shut off automatically and take a lot less time than an oven to pre-heat. While I kept cooking times standard across both cooking methods, some of the foods I cooked in the oven (the wings and fries) might have benefitted from an extra 5 minutes of cooking.
Winner: Air fryer
The verdict
I wouldn't choose between these two cooking methods when putting on a Super Bowl spread. The most convenient method is to use both. On Sunday, I'll leave my air fryer to handle my crispy chicken wings and French fries and fill up my oven with all the extras that don't require that super-crispy finish.
Your oven has the capacity required to cook up oven-ready appetizers with minimal supervision, while the staple dishes of chicken wings and French fries are better air-fried. And that way, you won't have to play air fryer Tetris to ensure all your food is cooked at the same time.
If you're going to force me to pick one method though, I'd wrangle all my food into my air fryer all over again just for those sticky glazed wings. That's how much of a difference the air fryer makes.
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