Will it air fry? I've taste-tested 9 Christmas favorites in an air fryer –here are the results

Will it air fry? I've taste-tested 9 Christmas favorites in an air fryer - here are the results Features (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) (Image credit: Future) Andrew Williams published From mince pies to mulled wine, which fares best in an air fryer? Air fryers have been the top piece of viral kitchen tech for so long you’d think the trend would have long since run out of fuel. But we have no doubt that some of the best air fryers you can buy will once again be among the most-gifted Christmas presents of 2025. But how versatile are these things really? I tried cooking nine different British Christmas food classics - and most will be familiar to you if you're in the US or elsewhere - to see if air fryers really can replace an oven and/or your other kitchen gadgets. True air fryer believers will tell you they can, even though these things are basically just tiny ovens with a more proactive fan that flings heat around in a more aggressive manner. The rules for my challenge: no other cooking tech is allowed. If water is being heated, it’s getting air-fried, and we’re using one of the most basic air fryers out there. A word of warning though: make sure to check your air fryer's manual before cooking or heating anything unusual, as in some of the experiments below. We’ve steered away from some of the obvious culinary picks, like pigs in blankets, which these days may well come with air fryer cooking instructions. And we did not attempt to stick an entire turkey into an air fryer to see what happened - ours isn’t nearly big enough, for starters. Aside from some predictable wins and losses, there were a few surprises in our great big festive air fryer cook-off. Here’s how it went - starting with something easy. 1. Mince pies Will it air fry? score: 8/10 An air fryer is ideal for heating up that staple of a British Christmas, the mince pie. It takes less time and less electricity than a conventional oven, and they're done within a few minutes. The question here is how much browning of the pastry we want to see in the process of heating the filling. Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. And this is particularly important for mince pies with an ultra-fine dusting of sugar, which will get taken out (or at least caramelized) pretty quickly under intense heat. 2. Mashed potato Will it air fry? score: 7/10 Air fryers are famously good at making chips and roast potatoes. But how about mashed potato? The usual method is, of course, to boil and then mash. You can get similar-ish results by throwing whole potatoes in the air fryer, baking them, scooping out the insides and - as usual - chucking in a load of...

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