What should I do if my air fryer……..?

Welcome back to Air Fryer Bro, the place where we delve deep into the weeds of the air fryer world! Today, we are looking at some scenarios that could happen to your air fryer and what you should do about them. I have already dealt with the big air fryer mechanical problems in other articles, such as air fryers smoking and possibly catching fire.

However, there are some smaller issues with simpler answers that don’t need an article all to themselves, so I am grouping them together in this article.

Please read your air fryers manual to make sure you are using the air fryer correctly. You don’t want to go through all this trouble shooting only to find you were pressing buttons incorrectly!!

So without further ado, here are some more common mechanical issues with air fryers and what to do with them!

What to do if my air fryer is blowing cold air?

Some users have reported that their air fryers are blowing cold air, and they don’t know why.

Why is my air fryer blowing cold air? Let’s talk about the possibilities!

Often, this is a problem with the heating element of your air fryer. It may have lost connection or simply burned out. Heating elements can fail sometimes, and when this happens you should contact the manufacturer of your air fryer to either get it fixed or for them to send a replacement part.

Hopefully, your air fryer is still under warranty.

What to do if my air fryer takes so long to cook?

If your air fryer takes a long time to cook things, this is something that is probably related again to your air fryer’s heating element. This heating element could be degrading and in need of replacement.

It should be obvious when this happens, as an air fryer usually cooks very quickly. When these cook times start to get substantially longer, your heating element might be having problems.

Another possibility is the fan in your air fryer might be broken. This powerful fan is what helps create those faster cooking times, as it pushing very hot air around the food constantly.

Both of these problems are terminal, and you should contact the manufacturer of your air fryer immediately.

What to do if my air fryer is steaming

First of all, please don’t mistake this with the white smoke problem that can happen with air fryers. Steam should be odorless. If this ‘steam’ has any type of smell you are dealing with white smoke and should look at my other article about this.

Once you have confirmed that steam is coming out of your air fryer (and not smoke), this is actually a perfectly normal thing to happen to an air fryer. When liquid heats up it will turn to steam and in most cases be vented neatly out of the back of the air fryer. My Philips air fryer has a venting system like this, so steam is not a problem.

The only slight problem might be if the venting system in your air fryer is not good, the steam might leak out from the bottom side of your unit and start turning into water and gathering up. This is a slight problem I have heard from some Cosori air fryer owners, although I haven’t experienced it myself.

What to do if my air fryer is not rotating?

Believe it or not, some air fryers do use functions that rotate. The most famous one that comes to my mind is the Tefal Actifry pictured below.

This Tefal air fryer uses a stirring paddle to move the food around the air fryer as it is being cooked.

If the rotating element inside your air fryer stops moving, you should check inside it carefully to see if any food or other debris has gotten stuck in the rotating mechanism effectively jamming it. This is one of the problems some of these rotating elements have.

If you cannot see anything jamming your air fryer, the other possibility is that the motor behind the rotating feature has broken, burned out or lost its electrical connection.

If you cannot solve these problems, you should contact your air fryer manufacturer.

What to do if my air fryer is making a rattling noise?

This problem seems to be fairly common, and is something you should investigate carefully. Make sure that there is nothing moving around inside your air fryer whilst cooking and making the rattling noise, as this could get stuck in the air fryers heating element and cause a problem. For example, it could be food or a piece of plastic that has broken off from one of your air fryer accessories.

Air fryers have powerful fans, so it can push small items around the cooking compartment quite easily.

If you have searched inside your air fryer and can’t find anything that could be causing the rattling, it must be something loose within the casing of your air fryer. If it is not affecting your air fryers cooking ability, you could continue using the unit (if you can get used to the rattling). However, you are using at your own risk, because anything moving around inside the casing of your air fryer could potentially cause a problem.

If in doubt, return the air fryer to its manufacturer or the shop you bought it from (assuming it is still under warranty).

What to do if my air fryer only goes to 200 degrees?

This one is down to the method the air fryer uses to record temperature. Although North Americans are used to their air fryers being in Fahrenheits, a lot of other countries in the world (including the one I currently live in) use Celsius.

This is a dead giveaway, as the maximum temperature for most Celsius based air fryers is exactly 200 degrees Celsius, hence why your air fryer is stuck at 200.

It is unlikely that you inadvertently bought an air fryer in Celsius if you live in North America, so I imagine that you accidentally changed this function over. Consult your air fryer’s manual to find out how to change it back.

What to do if my air fryer burns everything?

The first thing to say is to make sure that you are pinning down any light food that you are cooking in your air fryer. The powerful fan inside will push light food around the air fryer and it might get stuck in the air fryer’s heating element.

Not only is this annoying, it’s also dangerous! I always put an extra wire rack on top of any light food I want to cook in my air fryer.

I say this because I see users such as this one on Reddit below, who don’t seem to realise what they are doing and how dangerous it is. Hopefully rbrennan knows better now 🙂

Other than this, if you are burning a lot of food it is probably because you are not used to the power that an air fryer has. They were made to replace hot oil fryers, which cook things fast. The problem is when people treat them like regular ovens and end up over cooking everything.

For an example, when I did my air fried frozen french fries experiment, I found that I could cook frozen french fries in my air fryer in about half the time recommended for even a fan-assisted oven.

I would also recommend starting your cooking journey with air fryers by under-estimating your cooking times and don’t just take your times straight from an oven. Half your oven times and take it from there.

It is also a good idea to invest in a good meat thermometer (I have one on my recommended products page) to make sure your meat is cooked. Some new users will burn the outside of their meat and find out it is still raw inside 🙂

What to do if my air fryer won’t close?

I actually had this very problem with my first generic brand Chinese air fryer. After about a year the catch broke off from the lid mechanism and couldn’t be closed anymore.

Most traditional bucket style air fryers have a catch and latch system similar to a car door (but way simpler), and if the plastic latch breaks there is nothing to hold the lid in place.

I tried to put weighty items on top of my air fryers lid to keep it shut during cooking, something I wouldn’t recommend!! Quite soon after this, I went out and bought a new air fryer with my wife! Especially, as the lid had opened a couple of times unexpectedly during cooking 🙂

There is also the possibility that something is jammed in between your air fryer and the lid. You need to look carefully around the join of the two, and watch as you try to open and close a few times. You should then be able to see if anything is getting stuck between the two.

For most people, just send your air fryer back!

For most people, when you have a terminal problem you should just return your air fryer to its manufacturer if it is still under warranty. Air fryers are complex enough that if you don’t know what you are doing, you will cause more harm than good.

If your air fryer is out of warranty, you should just buy a new one. The cost of paying an expert to fix your broken air fryer will probably be similar or even more than the cost of buying a new air fryer.

If you have some knowledge of working with electrical appliances and their complex wiring etc, you might want to risk fixing it yourself. Look at these videos below to give you an idea what it might entail! And be aware that the air fryer he is dismantling below is quite a simple one without a digital display.

You learn something new every day!

I think that’s enough air fryer related problems for one day. Please check back for more another day 🙂

If you have any other problems that you can’t see on this site (air fryer related, of course!!), then please tell us all about them in the comments section below.

Finally, we do have other trouble shooting articles about what to do if your air fryer won’t turn on or keeps turning itself off for no reason, as well as some other common air fryer issues.