The air fryer accessory aisle is a strange place. The machine itself is a simple convection oven in a bucket, and yet it has spawned an economy of 20-piece kits, cake barrels, egg molds, and gadgets that will spend their lives in a drawer. After the machine, most kitchens genuinely benefit from about four add-ons, all cheap. This guide names them, explains what to look for in each, and calls out the stuff you can safely ignore.
Buy first: an instant-read thermometer
Nothing improves air fryer cooking like knowing when food is actually done. Air fryers run hot and fast, cook times on recipes are guesses about someone else's machine, and the difference between juicy and chalky chicken is about three minutes. An instant-read thermometer ends the guessing. The ThermoWorks ThermoPop 2 is the standard budget recommendation for a reason: it reads in two to three seconds, the display rotates and lights up, and it costs around $40 as of mid-2026, roughly a third of the price of ThermoWorks' flagship Thermapen. It is for anyone who cooks meat at all, in any appliance. The honest limitation is that plenty of $15 thermometers on the market read almost as well, only slower; if $40 stings, a slower probe still beats no probe.
Buy second: a reusable silicone liner
The most common air fryer complaint is cleanup, and a fitted silicone liner solves most of it. It sits in the basket like a flexible tray, catches marinades and melted cheese, and goes in the dishwasher while the basket itself stays clean. Liners are generic, widely available, and cheap, usually $10 to $20 for one or a pair. Three things matter when choosing one: it must match your basket's shape and size (measure, do not eyeball), it should be food-grade silicone rated to at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and it needs raised ridges on the floor so air can still reach the underside of the food. That last point is the honest limitation of the whole category: any liner blocks some airflow, so food crisps a little less on the bottom. For saucy, sticky cooking that trade is worth it; for maximum-crunch fries, leave the liner out.
Buy third: an oil sprayer
A thin, even mist of oil is what turns air-fried food from dry to golden, and a pump sprayer does it far better than drizzling. Buy a simple pump-style bottle, glass if you can, for around $10 to $20; Evo's trigger sprayers and OXO's mister are both well-regarded versions of the same idea. Fill it with a high-smoke-point oil like avocado or light olive oil. One warning worth repeating: several air fryer manufacturers caution against aerosol cooking sprays, because propellants and additives in some cans can degrade nonstick coatings over time. A refillable sprayer sidesteps the issue entirely. The limitation: cheap sprayers clog, especially with unfiltered oils, and even good ones want an occasional hot-water flush.
Buy fourth: disposable parchment liners
For fish, dumplings, and anything that welds itself to the basket, perforated parchment liners are the lazy insurance policy. A 100-pack costs under $15 and the perforations preserve most of the airflow a silicone liner blocks. Two rules keep them safe: never preheat the machine with an empty liner in it, because lightweight paper can lift into the heating element, and always weigh the liner down with food. They are single-use, which is the obvious limitation; if that bothers you, the silicone liner above covers most of the same jobs.
Cheap extras that earn their spot
- Silicone-tipped tongs. Metal tongs scratch nonstick baskets. A $10 pair of silicone-tipped ones flips wings without harming the coating.
- A small wire rack. Doubles your usable surface for bacon or toast if your basket has the height for it. Measure before buying.
- Skewers that fit. Short bamboo or metal skewers turn the machine into a kebab tool. Soak bamboo first.
Skip these
The multi-piece accessory kits are the main trap. They bundle a cake barrel, a pizza pan, an egg-bites mold, and a rack sized for some hypothetical average basket, and in practice half the pieces do not fit your model and the other half duplicate bakeware you own. Sizing is the quiet problem with the whole category: a 4-quart Cosori basket, a dual-drawer Ninja, and a toaster-oven-style machine have completely different interiors. If you want fitted extras, the safest route is the manufacturer's own line; Cosori and Ninja both sell accessories built for their specific baskets, which beats gambling on a universal kit.
Also skippable: magnetic cook-time cheat sheets (the times are generic guesses; your thermometer already knows), dedicated air fryer cookbooks beyond your first (recipes online are endless and free), and any "dehydrator upgrade" for a machine without a true low-temperature mode.
Match the accessory to your machine's format
One sizing subtlety trips up a lot of buyers: the accessory market quietly assumes a single round or square basket, and the machines have moved on. Dual-drawer models need two of everything, liners included, and their narrow rectangular drawers reject most round accessories outright. Oven-style air fryers with pull-out trays already behave like small ovens, so standard quarter-sheet pans and oven racks you own probably fit, and the dedicated air fryer versions add nothing. And the smallest 2-quart machines have so little clearance that a rack or a bulky liner can sit food too close to the element, which chars the top before the center cooks. Thirty seconds with a tape measure inside your basket saves two returns.
A note on cleaning, since that is why you are here
Half the accessory market exists because people hate cleaning the basket. The liners above fix the daily mess, and the deeper fix costs nothing: clean the basket while it is still warm, before the grease polymerizes into lacquer. For the heating element, unplug the machine, let it cool, and wipe the coil area with a barely damp cloth every few weeks. No accessory substitutes for that, and a gunked element is the usual culprit behind the dreaded smoking air fryer.
The short version
Spend around $80 total: a ThermoPop 2, one fitted silicone liner, a pump oil sprayer, and a pack of perforated parchment. That covers the real gaps in the machine. Everything else in the aisle is either bakeware you already own wearing a new label, or a solution to a problem the thermometer already solved.
