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.
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 butter/margarine and some seasoning.
The end result tastes fantastic, but we did think this method makes it a little bit trickier to weed out the last of the lumps ,as the moisture level of the potato is going to be more variable, and lower, than when using the classic boiled method.
3. Sprouts
- Will it air fry? score: 7/10
We do not doubt that there are great sprout recipes that involve an air fryer, but just flinging them in with a bit of seasoning is not the way to go.
I actually tried two methods here. Half of the sprouts were placed into the air fryer, naked. The other half were wrapped in foil with a bit of water, in an attempt to half-steam them. Neither method produced fantastic results.
The naked sprouts ended up super-brown on the outside with an inconsistent cook on the inside. Our foil-wrapped sprouts ended up looking better, but again they were a little too inconsistent.
An air fryer is likely better for finishing off sprout dishes than cooking them from raw.
4. Gravy
- Will it air fry? score: 2/10
Trying to prepare gravy in an air fryer is the culinary equivalent of watching brain-rot social media content. It’s pointless and not nourishing – and you should definitely check your air fryer’s instructions before attempting it.
Even at higher settings, the gravy never seems to get that hot. And you end up with a scum of evaporated gravy solids around the edge as the process runs on. Does it work? Sure. But there’s really no reason to prepare gravy this way.
5. Yorkshire pudding
- Will it air fry? score: 8/10
For the uninitiated, Yorkshire pudding is a savory baked dish made with eggs, flour, milk, and fat that’s typically served with roast meats – for Americans, it’s similar to a popover, but generally larger, and often bowl-shaped to hold gravy.
The rapid heat you can get with an air fryer may make it even better than a conventional oven for Yorkshire puddings, but you’re not going to fit a full platter of the things in a normal air fryer, of course.
As ever, the key is to heat the oil first in whatever receptacle you choose to use, and then give it a good amount of time with the air fryer drawer completely closed in order to keep the heat level nice and high.
I got surprisingly good results, ending up with a fairly light and well-risen XL-size Yorkshire pudding on my first attempt.
6. Stuffing
- Will it air fry? score: 9/10
It’s no surprise to see that stuffing works well in an air fryer, as they do a good job with most foods you’d typically use a fan-assisted oven for. We made six stuffing balls, with slightly more water in the mix than suggested.
What we got was a crispy outer with a soft and pliant inside. Lovely stuff. And there’s no reason a dishful of stuffing wouldn’t fare just as well in an air fryer.
7. Christmas pudding
- Will it air fry? score: 6/10
Another favorite of us Brits, Christmas pudding is certainly not a ‘pudding’ in the US sense of the word – it’s a steamed cake-like dessert made with dried fruits, suet, spices, breadcrumbs, eggs, and alcohol (usually sherry or brandy, or, even better, both). We expected this one to be a bust, as most of the ways you’d cook a Christmas pudding are all about retaining moisture. And, as our cheap, single-serve pudding had to be removed from its plastic dish so we could safely place it in the air fryer, the outlook was not good.
The results were surprisingly solid, though, no doubt buoyed by the fact a tiny Christmas pudding doesn’t need that long to cook. The edges were turned into a sort-of caramelized rind that were a nice contrast to the rest of the pudding – and it didn’t end up dry, which is the main thing I’d feared.
8. Cranberry sauce
- Will it air fry? score: 6/10
Americans enjoy cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, and it’s an equally indispensable condiment for us Brits if a turkey is the Christmas-dinner centerpiece. A bit of orange juice, a bit of brown sugar, a load of cranberries, and you can have it all done within 20 minutes or so of cooking using the traditional pan method; the cranberries contain pectin, which helps thicken out the sauce as it cools. But the air fryer method does require a bit of extra attention.
In most air fryers, the heat filament is not actually that far from whatever you’re cooking. And this risks your cranberries burning, not to mention making weird noises, particularly in the early stages. It’s all doable with the occasional stir, though, not to mention making the mixture isn’t boiling over.
9. Mulled wine
- Will it air fry? score: 0/10
Here’s a car crash we didn’t expect. Obviously an air fryer would never be the most sensible or quickest way to make mulled wine – basically wine heated with spices such as cinnamon and cloves, and optional extras like orange peel – and you should try this one at your own risk, after checking your model’s instructions. But, my goodness, this one went awry.
We didn’t try to simply heat up pre-made mulled wine. We stuck a load of red wine in some pyrex, shoved in a couple of mulled spice bags along with some slices of orange. It’s not the purist’s way, but it’s something.
However, in a bizarre turn, whenever I checked on how it was doing around a quarter of the mulled wine mix had made a bid for freedom, ending up on the bottom of the air fryer. And we know how clean most of those are.
Thankfully we’d cleaned it just before the mulled wine episode, but whatever turbulence the fan created with those orange slices and spice bags, it was a bad scene.
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