Last reviewed on 28 April 2026.
Most oven recipes can be cooked in an air fryer with two simple adjustments: drop the temperature, shorten the time. The interesting part is everything else — what to expect, where the rule of thumb breaks, and how to land on the right number for your specific dish.
The starting rule
The standard conversion most home cooks use as a first guess:
- Drop the temperature by about 25 °F (15 °C).
- Reduce the time by about 20%.
So a recipe written for "200 °C / 400 °F for 25 minutes" becomes a starting point of "185 °C / 375 °F for 20 minutes" in an air fryer. Set a timer for the new time, but check earlier — air fryers vary, and the cost of pulling food a minute too early is much smaller than the cost of pulling it a minute too late.
Why the rule works
An air fryer's chamber is much smaller than an oven's, and its fan moves heat across food surfaces faster. The same set temperature has a different effect: faster surface heating leads to faster browning, drier surfaces, and more aggressive crusting.
That's good for most savoury dishes — they're often what we want from the oven anyway, just more so. But it means that running an oven recipe at its original temperature in an air fryer tends to produce food that's overcooked on the outside before the inside has finished. Dropping the temperature flattens the surface-to-centre gradient; reducing the time accounts for the air fryer's faster overall heat transfer.
The four-step method
- Read the recipe with one question in mind. Is the surface or the centre the limiting factor? A roast chicken thigh wants a brown skin and a 75 °C / 165 °F interior; the surface usually finishes first. A casserole wants a hot, set centre and barely needs surface change. Different dishes want different conversion behaviour.
- Apply the standard adjustment. –25 °F, –20% time, as above.
- Check earlier than the new time. Pull the basket at 70% of the new time and inspect. For most foods you can keep going easily; you can't undo overcooking.
- Use a probe thermometer for proteins. Internal temperature is the only reliable judge for chicken, pork, fish, and eggs. Visual cues lie.
Adjustments by food category
Roasted vegetables
The standard rule works well. If the recipe was written for a fan-forced oven (already a convection setup), drop only 10 °C / 15 °F and 10% on the time — the air fryer is doing the same thing as a fan oven, just smaller. See the vegetables guide for cuts and timings.
Whole proteins (chicken thighs, fish fillets, pork chops)
Standard rule, but always check the centre with a probe. Air-fryer surfaces brown faster, which can fool you into thinking the protein is done before it actually is. Pull at internal-temp targets, not at colour.
Larger roasts (more than 4 cm / 1.5 in thick at the centre)
Drop the temperature more aggressively — 30–40 °C / 50–75 °F lower than the recipe — and add time. The air fryer's surface heat is too aggressive for slow-roast geometry. For anything over a kilogram, an oven is usually still the right tool. (See foods to avoid.)
Baked goods with leavening (cakes, muffins, quick breads)
These are the trickiest conversions. Use the standard rule but expect to adjust several times before settling on a final number. Tin shape matters — air fryer baskets are smaller, so divide the recipe into smaller tins to keep ratio of surface to volume reasonable. The baking guide covers tin choice and cake-specific timing.
Breaded and battered items
Conversions work but the texture differs from oven results — usually crisper, sometimes drier. A light spray of oil on the breading before cooking helps. Wet batters don't transfer at all (see foods to avoid).
Casseroles and bakes (lasagna, gratin, baked pasta)
Use the standard rule and a heatproof dish that fits inside the basket. Cover with foil for the first half of the cook to prevent the top from setting before the centre warms; remove the foil for the last 5 minutes to brown.
Cookies and biscuits
Drop the temperature more — 30 °C / 50 °F lower than the recipe — because the small chamber concentrates heat and these are thin, fast-cooking items. Cook in single layers, leave space between, and check at 60% of the original time.
Pizza
Almost always works, but the rule shifts. Pizza wants very high heat (250 °C / 475 °F oven temperatures) and short cook times. In an air fryer, run as hot as the unit allows and start checking at 6–7 minutes. Frozen pizza adapted from oven instructions usually finishes in roughly two-thirds the time.
A worked example
Take a typical oven recipe: bone-in chicken thighs, 220 °C / 425 °F for 35 minutes.
- Apply the rule: 220 °C – 15 °C ≈ 200 °C, 35 min × 0.8 = 28 min.
- The limiting factor is internal temperature, not surface — chicken needs 75 °C / 165 °F at the bone.
- Set the air fryer for 200 °C / 400 °F, 28 minutes. Flip halfway. Probe at 22 minutes. If reading 65–70 °C, give it the remaining 6 minutes; if already at 75 °C, pull immediately.
- Note what you ended up with — say "200 °C, 26 min, no flip needed" — for next time. Conversion gets a lot faster on the second attempt.
When the rule doesn't apply
A few cases to be aware of:
- Recipes that already use a fan-forced or convection setting. The 25 °F drop double-counts; only drop 10 °F.
- Recipes that depend on dry oven air to set a crust. Bread loaves, pavlovas, meringues — the air fryer's fan disturbs delicate surfaces. Most of these are better in the oven.
- Recipes designed around steam. Anything that benefits from a covered-then-uncovered approach in the oven needs to be adapted for the air fryer (cover with foil first, remove later) rather than converted directly.
- Very dense slow-cooks. Two-hour braises, dehydrating overnight — the air fryer's small chamber and stronger fan aren't designed for these durations.
A practical decision checklist
Before converting, ask:
- Is the dish small enough to fit in a single layer?
- Is the limiting factor surface (browning) or centre (internal temp)?
- Does the recipe rely on enclosed steam, dry oven air, or contained liquid?
- Will the conversion save meaningful time — or is the oven already a better fit?
If the answers are "yes / clear / no / yes", apply the standard rule and start cooking. If any of them are messy, the conversion may not be worth it.
Closing thought
Conversion is part arithmetic, part judgment. The arithmetic — minus 25 °F, minus 20% time — gets you 80% of the way there for 80% of recipes. The judgment is reading the recipe well enough to know which 20% of cases need a different approach. The reference data in our cooking times chart is useful as a sanity check after conversion: if your converted number is far outside the range listed there for similar foods, it's worth a second look before committing.