What These 12 Celebrity Chefs Cook In Their Air Fryer

If you don't know it by now, let us spell it out for you: We really love air fryers. These appliances are quick, easy to use, and capable of giving food a delicious, crispy coating — and if that wasn't good enough, there are loads of air fryer hacks that you can try to make your meals even better. We're not the only people who adore air fryers, though. These machines are in constant rotation in the kitchens of some of the most well-known chefs out there, who love their convection power just as much as we do.

It's probably no surprise that they use them, either. Celebrity chefs tend to keep up with the times, and with air fryers exploding in popularity recent years, these chefs know that their audiences will be craving recipes that incorporate them. Some, like Emeril Lagasse, even have their own line of air fryers, and so are kinda duty-bound to promote them. The real reason celebrity chefs love air fryers, though? It's the same reason we do: Because they're capable of making really good food, and you can use them for pretty much anything.

Making the perfect air fryer steak is easier than it seems, and while purists might shudder at the thought of using your appliance to make one, these proteins can turn out as juicy and delicious as the pain-fried version. Gordon Ramsay clearly knows this, and whips up his ribeyes in an air fryer with a coffee chili rub (via YouTube). Ramsay points out that air fryer steak retains its juices very effectively, with the air fryer's convection action browning every side of the meat simultaneously. As a bonus, you don't have to deal with grease dotted around your kitchen afterward.

Ramsay begins by patting his coffee chili rub all over his steak, and throwing it into his air fryer. The "Kitchen Nightmares" chef points out that the more time you give your steak to sit in the rub, the more it will absorb its flavors, making your meat extra-delicious. The coffee in the rub gives your steak a warm, slightly bitter note, with the acidity in the coffee lightly tenderizing the meat. Once the ribeye has had a whiz in the fryer and is a deep, chocolatey brown, he takes out the meat and slices it diagonally, piling up the steak bites and topping them with some compound butter.

Crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, and delicious in every bite: Chicken Milanese is a dish pretty much everyone enjoys. However, what you may not enjoy is making it. Traditional chicken Milanese requires you to shallow-fry your chicken in a fairly large amount of oil, which can be frightening to novice chefs — and leaves you with a load of fat everywhere. This is something that Giada De Laurentiis has clearly had enough of, which led her to her air fryer chicken Milanese recipe. Profiled on her lifestyle brand Giadzy's Instagram, the air fryer version looks just as good as the original, with a crunchy, perfectly-brown crust.

The key to making de Laurentiis' chicken Milanese at home is using plenty of cooking spray. Without it, your breadcrumb and parmesan coating will never brown as thoroughly as you want it to. De Laurentiis also pounds her chicken cutlets until they're super thin, roughly ½-inch thick each, which helps them cook through without burning on the outside. In total, her chicken Milanese takes 10 minutes to cook, and even less time to eat.

Grilled cheeses aren't exactly difficult to make, but they can be pretty annoying. Standing by the stove, constantly pressing your spatula down on your bread until it warms through, and trying to avoid it burning? It's all more irritating than it looks, y'all! Luckily, the Pioneer Woman has come to the rescue with an air fryer grilled cheese that makes your favorite sandwich a breeze (via The Pioneer Woman). Ree Drummond's grilled cheese uses two different types of cheese, cheddar and smoked gouda, and piles them both onto sourdough bread. The result is a complex, slightly tart sandwich that's gooey on the inside, deep-brown on the outside.

The beauty of this grilled cheese is that it's almost entirely hands-off. Once it's popped in the air fryer at 390 degrees Fahrenheit, the only thing you have to do is flip it halfway through the cooking process, to ensure that it's browned on both sides. Drummond boosts the flavor of the cheese even further by throwing mustard into the mix. As for the outsides, they're coated with softened butter, which allows them to brown and develop deep flavor.

Meat fares particularly well in the air fryer, thanks to the appliance's knack for developing a gorgeous brown crust on chicken, beef, and pork. Stephanie Izard harnesses this power in a chili chicken recipe that'll have you salivating (via Instagram). Izard throws skin-on chicken thighs coated in a chili lime crunch into her air fryer, and pops on the air fryer until they're crispy and blackened. She avoids using an air fryer liner here, so that the chicken has full contact with the fryer basket's metal: This helps it develop extra color on its bottom side. The chicken thighs cook in just nine minutes, achieving an incredible color in a very short amount of time.

Once the chicken is cooked, Izard then whips up a mole-inspired sauce that's flavored with dark chocolate chips, and nestles the thighs on top. The sauce, incidentally, is cooked on the stove — we guess you can't use these appliances for absolutely everything! This dish would go perfectly with a side of white rice, but we'd also guess that it's ideal served with some soft flatbread.

Air fryers are good for many things, but in our opinion, few things are as good in them as potatoes. Poppy O'Toole, who runs the mega-popular TikTok account @poppycooks, clearly agrees with us. O'Toole likes to whip up baked potatoes in her air fryer, which takes a fraction of the time as they do in the oven.

@poppycooks

The perfect airfryer jacket potato 🥔❤️ #airfryer #potatotiktok #jacketpotato

♬ original sound – Poppy O'Toole

Interestingly, she uses two appliances to do this: First the microwave, and then the air fryer. The microwave works to steam the potatoes quickly, cooking them through so that you don't have to worry about chewing through any raw lumps. After this, O'Toole pops them in the air fryer for 15-20 minutes, which sizzles their skins until they turn crispy and golden. The whole thing takes a maximum of half an hour, which is roughly half the time oven-baked potatoes can take, and they come out just as good. Remember, too, that it's not just baked potatoes that you can make in your air fryer. They're also the solution to turning forgotten canned potatoes into something delicious, and can be used to make French fries, wedges, and even patatas bravas.

Jamie Oliver is no stranger to air fryers. The British celebrity chef has an entire program centered around using them, where he cooks everything from herb-stuffed salmon to savory scones. His pièce de résistance, though, is a show-stopping dessert that harnesses the air fryer to create an incredibly complicated dish in no time: the baked Alaska (via YouTube).

Yes, baked Alaskas can be made in your air fryer, folks — although Oliver, by his own admission, makes a cheat version that's way simpler. He begins with a hot cross bun, sliced down the middle with the top side discarded (or munched with some butter). He then douses it with some sherry and smears chocolate spread over it, before adding canned peaches, vanilla ice cream, and creamy meringue to cover the whole thing. As with a regular oven, the meringue insulates the ice cream, stopping it from melting in the super-hot air fryer. The baked Alaska cooks for five minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and the outside of the meringue turns slightly golden and crisp. Slice it down the middle, and the ice cream will have gently softened while still remaining solid. Pretty ingenious, right?

You can make a lot of things in your air fryer, but fried rice? We've gotta be honest, it's not high on our list of air fryer recipes. Leave it to "Girl Meets Farm" host Molly Yeh to show us how it's done, though, with an air fryer crispy rice recipe that turns rice salads into a breeze (via Facebook). Crucially, Yeh isn't making egg-fried rice in her air fryer here (although you better believe that you can do that, too). Instead, she's taking clumps of day-old rice and blasting it with the ultra-hot air of her appliance, helping it brown and develop maximum crunch.

Yeh makes sure to spray her rice thoroughly with cooking oil, to ensure that it doesn't burn as it cooks. She then seasons it generously with salt, and blasts the rice at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for just a few minutes, adding in peanuts along the way, so that they crisp up, too. Yeh then adds her rice to a Thai-inspired salad, made with kale and a sweet, tart, funky dressing. While jasmine rice generally works best for this recipe, you can use any rice you like, provided that it has a good starch content and sticks together well.

Celebrity chefs aren't always trying to emulate gourmet dishes with their air fryers. Sometimes, they just like to use them to make cooking regular food items that little bit quicker. That's what Geoffrey Zakarian does with his frozen baguettes. "I use the air fryer to bake mini frozen French baguettes. Because of the small space, I can get a great result in a short amount of time," Zakarian told Food and Wine. Zakarian points out that for the best results, you should pop a small ramekin full of gently salty water into your air fryer basket with your bread. This helps steam the outside of the baguettes, giving them extra crispiness and a gentle seasoning.

So, why does Zakarian use his air fryer for his baguettes? Cost efficiency. Unless you're warming up a large amount of frozen food, air fryers are ideal for cooking them quickly, as you don't have to fire up the whole oven to do so. Time efficiency is a factor too, as your air fryer will cook your baguettes way quicker than your oven will.

Guy Fieri is a professional when it comes to all-American food: Burgers, shakes, and fries are all items that he knows well. Chicken tenders are also well within his remit, although surprisingly he doesn't stick his in the deep fryer. Instead, he prefers his air fryer, which gives his tenders an ultra-crispy result that isn't weighed down with cooking oil (via Today).

Interestingly, in Fieri's recipe, pretty much everything is the same as if you were deep-frying them. He brines his chicken tenders in buttermilk and coats them in a seasoned flour, egg wash, and breadcrumb coating. Rather than throw them into a vat of hot oil, though, he sprays them lightly with cooking oil and fires up the air fryer to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, cooking for 10-12 minutes. This slightly lower heat is essential to their success. By cooking them low and slow (well, by air fryer standards, anyway), the tenders are able to gradually crisp up and brown. At the same time, the white chicken meat is prevented from getting tough and chewy, and all of its moisture is locked in.

Nigella Lawson has always been the kind of cook who moves with the times, so it's little surprise that her air fryer recipes are on regular rotation. While Lawson takes issue with the term "air fryer" itself — pointing out that it technically doesn't fry your food at all (which we sorta have to agree with) — she uses it for everything from sausages to roast chicken. She even steams fish in her air fryer, by popping some liquid in the bottom and putting her fish filets in the basket on top.

It's the pork belly that Lawson makes in her air fryer, though, that really caught our eye (via Express). Pork belly is the ideal choice in the air fryer, due to its high fat-to-meat ratio. The fat will help keep the belly meat moist in the hot air of the fryer, while the heat will crisp up the skin and fat. While Lawson cooks slices in her air fryer, you can also cook an entire pork belly joint and slice it once it's ready. This will help to keep the meat ultra-moist.

We just don't trust people who don't like chicken wings — and we really don't trust people who don't like ways to make them easier to cook. That's why we love Ming Tsai's method for chicken wings, which harnesses the power of his air fryer. The star of "The Next Iron Chef" begins by thoroughly massaging his seasonings into his wings, combining them all in a plastic bag, and getting handsy (via Instagram). Doing this helps the flavors get right under the skin of each wing, giving every bite maximum impact.

He then throws his wings into the air fryer and cooks them on high. In the air fryer, the skin of every wing gets extra crispy and browned, meaning that when they meet the sauce (which is infused with Frank's Red Hot), they retain a firm texture. Making air fryer chicken wings also means that you don't have to worry about frying the wings in copious amounts of oil, which will not only make them heavier, but will make your kitchen messier.

There are loads of weird and wonderful things you can make in your air fryer, but we're betting that you didn't have potato salad on your bingo card. Well, it's true — you can combine potato salad and your favorite stovetop appliance to make one of Valerie Bertinelli's favorite dishes. Crucially though, Bertinelli isn't mixing up her ingredients in the air fryer basket. Rather, she's taking leftover potato salad and turning it into a brand-new dish by air frying it (via Food Network).

When a day-old potato salad is cooked in the air fryer, something glorious happens: The potatoes turn deeply crispy, with the mayonnaise acting as a sort of cooking oil. They also retain their creaminess, and their tangy flavor — and while the potatoes are gently re-cooked, they don't turn mushy. Importantly, Bertinelli makes sure that she doesn't put eggs in her potato salad when it's going into the air fryer, as cooking them will make them too rubbery. She also sticks to mayonnaise-based potato salads, and not those coated in vinaigrette. While you can probably cook those in the air fryer too, the mayonnaise really helps to brown things here, so you might not get the same result.