I've been preaching about the joys of the best air fryers for years, but even I can admit that there's a major downside to these appliances. Even when you think you've scrubbed every corner of these machines, they can reach a point where they feel grubby and greasy after every use. And if you've ever tried to clean your air fryer's heating element, you'll know that some hidden spots are just impossible to keep free of grease stains and splashes.
That's why I was a bit surprised when I spotted the Fritaire; an air fryer made of glass, with a colorful lid that lifts away to make it easy to reach every surface of the cooking bowl. It looks like no air fryer I've seen before, and better yet, this air fryer actually claims to be self-cleaning.
There are lots of videos of Fritaire on TikTok, some with over a million views. So, does it work? I tried this self-cleaning air fryer in our test kitchen, and here's how it went.
How does the Fritaire self-cleaning work?
A self-clean setting is a feature I've yet to see in my years of reviewing air fryers. Some TikTok hacks will tell you that you can add water and dish soap to your basket and run your fryer for a few minutes to clean, but for some reason, you'll struggle to find a manufacturer that will endorse adding large amounts of water to their electrical product — and yes, I've asked them.
Fritaire, however, will happily advise that this is the best way to keep its air fryer clean. In fact, it's a selling point. On the brand's website, it says "With Fritaire, you just fill the glass bowl with soapy water and let the hot air stream circulator rinse it out from the inside."
According to Fritaire, all you need is a drop of dish soap and some warm water to use the self-clean function with this air fryer. I cooked a day's worth of meals in this fryer before testing the self-cleaning setting, so it had crumbs, fat and cooking liquids baked onto the base of the bowl.
The air fryer has a powerful fan on the underside of the colorful lid, which circulates heat around the cooking bowl. This same fan causes the water to swirl around the base of the air fryer as it heats up, mimicking a mini whirlpool that's pretty satisfying to watch.
@tyyalzadeh ♬ LITTLE MO' BETTA - David Davis
To use, there are five steps:
1. Pour 1-2 inches of water into the bottom of the air fryer
2. Add a drop of dish soap
3. Plug in your Fritaire and switch it on
4. Set the temperature to 400°F and the timer to 10 minutes
5. Once finished, wait for the water to cool before pouring it away and rinsing the bowl of any soapy residue.
Does it deliver?
Does the self-cleaning mode work on the Fritaire air fryer? Surprisingly, it did a pretty good job. It didn't get as sudsy as I expected, perhaps because you are only advised to use a small drop of dish soap. If you were to add too much, I could see there being an issue with foam building up in the bowl and possibly getting the heating unit wet, which would be a bad idea.
Still, when the 10 minutes were up and I let my water cool, there were splotches of re-solidified fat and cooking juices floating on my lather of water, and when I poured this away, it took the remaining crumbs away with it.
I then gave the bowl a good rinse, and did need to wipe away a mark down the side of the bowl which sat out of reach of my water. It was easy enough to remove though, likely because the steam from my hot water had lifted it slightly, so it wasn't as baked-on as it was before self-cleaning.
Because you can only add a moderate amount of water to this machine, it won't do such a good job of reaching up the sides of the bowl. And of course, it takes 10 minutes for the cycle to run, plus time taken for the water to cool off before you pour it away, which is more than enough time for you to clean this bowl 10 times over with a sponge and some dish soap.
So while this air fryer does technically do a good job of cleaning itself, that doesn't mean that this is the best way of keeping it clean.
Here's the catch
The Fritaire comes with a handful of very fine-mesh metal inserts, and from experience, these are a nightmare to keep clean. There's a shelf that allows air to circulate your food as it cooks, a rotisserie basket that keeps food such as fries or vegetables consistently rotating so they're evenly heated, and an attachment that can be used to rotisserie large cuts of meat like chicken. Can the Fritaire clean these, too? Unfortunately not.
While you can use the self-clean setting for the fryer's glass bowl, the attachments can go in the dishwasher or be cleaned by hand. The glass bowl, unfortunately, is not dishwasher-safe, so while you set your air fryer on for its 10-minute self-clean cycle, you're more likely to be scrubbing your mesh of crumbs and grease over the sink than taking a well-earned break on the couch. If I were you, I'd just throw the bowl in the sink for good measure.
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