Best Oil Spray for Air Fryers
The best oil spray for air fryers is the one you have on hand! Whether avocado oil, vegetable oil, or canola oil, this guide will help you choose which oil to use when air frying.
Whether you’re cooking french fries, pizza rolls, or making an entire meal with chicken and vegetables, you may be wondering which oil spray to use.
Air fryers are known for using less oil, and moving hot air around your food so it crisps your food with very little oil.
Do you need to use oil? Yes and no…
Yes, if you don’t want your food sticking to your air fryer! No, if you have something like frozen tater tots that already have an oily coating on them.
The Best Oil Spray for Air Fryers
When you’re air frying at high temperatures, you want to use a high smoke point oil.
High Smoke Point Oil Sprays – these include avocado oil, canola oil, peanut oil, and corn oil. Use one of these anytime you are air frying above 325 degrees f. If you want to deep fry foods, these are the oils to use as well. Sunflower oil is a great option for shallow frying.
Low Smoke Point Oils are flaxseed, walnut oil, and pumpkin seed oil. If the oil came from a seed, it’s best not to get too high in temperature when cooking. This goes for air frying or regular cooking.
When you cook at a lower temperature, around 300˚-350˚ you can use an oil with a lot of flavors. The extra light flavor that much oil can give to your chicken breast is incredible!
Oils you should not use for air frying? Sesame oil and extra virgin olive oil.
Sesame oil is best used sparingly, and it’s not great to douse something in.
Extra Virgin Olive oil is best used for finishing a salad or drizzling over grilled chicken. Its fruity flavors dissipate when it hits the heat, and are best left unheated. You should never deep-fry in extra virgin olive oil.
That being said, California Olive Farms has an olive oil spray I highly recommend using! It’s great for that little spritz here and there.
First, let’s talk about avocado oil. While it is one of the healthiest oils and has a high smoke point for air fryer recipes, it’s expensive!
It’s better to invest in an oil mister for cooking, so you can add whatever oil you’d like, and know you’re only spraying the oil. This is the best oil sprayer! I love it’s fine mist of any type of oil onto your food or kitchen equipment.
Coconut Oil is a favorite for air fryers! It’s great at medium to high temperatures and gives a great flavor to your food.
While most spray oils don’t give off any flavor, coconut oil does.
Of course, there is the usual nonstick spray like Pam Cooking Spray. It’s a great go-to that works like a charm! It has a neutral flavor and doesn’t add anything extra.
Pam Spray makes butter-flavored oil spray bottles. I like to use this when I’m air frying shrimp! It adds a great flavor.
When I cook a steak in the air fryer, I’ll use the Grill Spray from Pam.
Most of these aerosol spray cans don’t have the healthiest oil in them. And when I want the health benefits of the right oil, I’ll either use a basting brush and brush on olive oil. Or, use an oil spray bottle.
Grapeseed Oil – it’s a great option for cooking up to 420˚. It’s a good idea to use this oil because it has healthy fats, and is one of the better different types of oil. Grape seed oil is great to use in salad dressings, too!
Best Practices for Air Fryer Oil
When you go to air fry food, spray the air fryer basket with your favorite oils.
This is the best way to ensure nothing sticks to the air fryer, and you have easier clean-up. But! It also ensures browning on your food.
A small amount of oil helps food items to get golden brown!
In my Chefman Compact Air Fryer, the cooking basket has nonstick surfaces. However, I still like to use a bit of oil spray when using this versatile appliance!
For the best results use less than a teaspoon of oil!
Here are some of my favorite foods made in the air fryer:
Teriyaki Chicken and Brussels Sprouts
Frozen Chicken Wings in Air Fryer
