🛍️ Air Fryer Accessories: The 8 Worth Buying and the 6 That Are a Waste of Money
Reading time: ~7 minutes 🕐
TL;DR 💰 — Amazon has thousands of air fryer accessories, and most of them are junk that ends up in your kitchen junk drawer within a month. This guide separates the accessories that genuinely upgrade your air fryer game from the ones that are a solution in search of a problem. Total spend for the essentials: about $40. Total spend on the junk we'll tell you to skip: $100+. 💸
🎯 The Reality of Air Fryer Accessories
Walk into any Amazon "air fryer accessory bundle" and you'll get:
- 5 silicone liners you don't need 🤷
- A "cake pan" that doesn't fit your basket 🎂
- Metal tongs that scratch your coating 😱
- A "recipe book" of AI-generated slop 📖
- 3 skewer sticks nobody uses 🍢
Then you buy it, use 2 items, and shove the rest in a drawer. We've all been there.
Here's what actually earns its place. ✅
✅ The 8 Accessories Worth Buying
1. 🧂 A Good Silicone Basket Liner (~$8)
Why it's worth it: For sticky, saucy, or crumbly foods (bacon, salmon with glaze, cinnamon rolls), a reusable silicone liner saves 5+ minutes of scrubbing. It's dishwasher safe and lasts years.
What to buy: A square/round liner sized to your specific basket with tall walls and airflow holes. NOT a flat one.
What to avoid: Cheap solid-bottom silicone. It blocks airflow and steams your food. 🚫
2. 🥧 A Small Springform or Bundt-Style Pan That Fits Your Basket (~$12)
Why it's worth it: Opens up baking possibilities — cheesecakes, quiches, mini bundt cakes, frittatas, egg bites. This is a genuine "what CAN'T my air fryer do?" upgrade.
Sizing: For an 8-quart basket, look for a 6–7 inch pan. Test-fit before you fill it.
3. 🥩 An Instant-Read Meat Thermometer (~$15)
Why it's worth it: The single biggest cause of "my chicken came out dry" is guessing at doneness. A thermometer eliminates that entirely.
Target temps to memorize:
- 🐔 Chicken: 165°F
- 🐟 Salmon: 125°F (medium)
- 🐷 Pork: 145°F
- 🥩 Beef (medium): 135°F
What to buy: ThermoPro TP-19 or Kizen. Skip the Bluetooth ones for air fryer use.
4. 🥄 Silicone-Tipped Tongs (~$10)
Why it's worth it: Metal tongs scratch the non-stick coating. Silicone-tipped tongs give you the grip you need without ruining the $50–100 basket investment.
What to buy: OXO Good Grips silicone tongs, medium size.
5. 📄 Perforated Parchment Paper (~$8)
Why it's worth it: For cheese-heavy or greasy items where a silicone liner is overkill but the basket alone is going to be a nightmare to clean.
Critical detail: ONLY use perforated parchment. Solid parchment blocks airflow. And ONLY use when weighted down by food — a floating scrap of parchment gets sucked into the heating element. 🔥
6. 🌡️ A Cheap Oven Thermometer (~$5)
Why it's worth it: Air fryer thermostats drift over time. Every 6 months, put a $5 oven thermometer in your basket, run it at 375°F for 10 min, and see what it actually reads. If it's 20°F off, you know to adjust your recipes.
7. 🥇 Silicone Egg Bite Molds (~$10)
Why it's worth it: The Starbucks-style sous vide egg bite is basically free with an air fryer + this mold. Also great for mini muffins, brownies, quiches, and yogurt bites for kids.
Look for: 7-well or 9-well, matches your basket diameter.
8. 🍽️ A Second Basket (~$30)
Why it's worth it: If your unit doesn't have dual zones, buying a spare basket lets you swap in a fresh one when the first is cooking, without pausing to clean. Or use it for messy vs. clean cook cycles.
Miraston customers: we sell replacement baskets directly for exactly this use case. 🛒
Total essential spend: ~$98 for accessories that will last years and genuinely change how you use the appliance.
❌ The 6 Accessories to Skip
1. 🎣 Metal Skewer / Kabob Attachments
Why to skip: Sounds fun. In practice, they're hard to load, hard to remove, and the metal scratches basket coatings. Just cook cubed meat and veggies flat in the basket — you get the same result without the hassle.
Money saved: ~$20
2. 🔄 Rotisserie Attachments (Unless Your Unit Was Designed For One)
Why to skip: Rotisseries are cool in demonstrations and pointless in real life. They take 15 min to set up, another 15 to clean, and produce results marginally different from just cooking the chicken flat.
Data point: after 6 months, less than 10% of rotisserie owners have used it more than twice. 📉
Money saved: ~$40
3. 🍳 "Air Fryer Frying Pan" Attachments
Why to skip: A pan inside your air fryer defeats the entire point. The convection air can't hit the food. You've turned your $130 air fryer into a $130 slow oven.
Money saved: ~$25
4. 📖 Branded Cookbooks
Why to skip: The internet is free. TikTok is free. YouTube is free. There are literally 10,000 free air fryer recipes with videos out there. A $20 cookbook is almost always a repackaged blog post collection.
Money saved: ~$20
Exception: If you love physical cookbooks aesthetically, the Ninja Foodi cookbook or Skinnytaste air fryer book have decent original content.
5. 🎨 "Cake Pop" or "Donut" Silicone Molds
Why to skip: They melt (some do), warp, or don't cook the batter through because the air can't circulate around the trapped bottom. Cake pop molds specifically have a very high failure rate.
Money saved: ~$12
6. 🌡️ Smart Wi-Fi Thermometers for Air Fryers
Why to skip: The whole point of an air fryer is that everything cooks in 10–20 min. You don't need a $75 Bluetooth probe with app notifications for a 12-minute chicken breast. Just use the $15 instant-read.
Money saved: ~$60
Total wasted spend avoided: ~$177 💰
🧠 The Buying Framework
Before you add any accessory to your cart, ask three questions:
❓ Question 1: Does it fit my specific basket?
Air fryer baskets vary by 2–3 inches in every direction. A "universal" accessory almost never truly fits. Measure yours first. 📏
❓ Question 2: Will I use this at least once a week?
If the answer is "maybe once a month" — pass. Kitchen accessories that live in drawers are pure clutter.
❓ Question 3: Does it block airflow?
Anything solid on the bottom (flat plates, solid pans, non-perforated parchment) fundamentally works against how the air fryer cooks. Only use these when the recipe SPECIFICALLY requires trapping moisture (custards, some cheesecakes).
🥇 The Miraston Accessory Bundle
We put together the exact 5-item starter bundle we'd recommend to any new air fryer owner — no filler, no gimmicks:
- 🧂 Silicone basket liner (perforated, sized to fit)
- 🥧 6.5" springform pan
- 🥩 Instant-read thermometer
- 🥄 Silicone-tipped tongs
- 📄 100-pack perforated parchment papers
Available bundled with any Miraston air fryer at checkout. Also sold separately if you already own one.
🎁 Bonus: 3 Accessories That Are Great But Optional
Not essential, but genuinely useful if the use case fits:
🍞 A Small Wire Rack (for two-tier cooking, ~$8)
Lets you cook two layers of food simultaneously — chicken thighs below, veggies above. Only works in larger 8-quart+ baskets.
🍰 Mini Loaf Pan (~$10)
For banana bread, mini meatloaves, or gluten-free bread. Great if you bake often.
🥫 Air Fryer Divider (~$12)
Splits a single basket into two zones. Useful for people with single-basket units who want to fake dual-zone cooking.
⚠️ Accessory Care Rules
- 🧼 Always hand-wash silicone the first time to remove manufacturing residues
- 🚫 Never use metal utensils in the basket even if the accessory allows it
- 📦 Store accessories in one place so you actually use them
- 🔄 Replace silicone liners every 6–12 months of heavy use
- 🌡️ Verify accessory heat rating — some cheap silicones melt above 400°F
🎯 Bottom Line
Air fryer accessories are 20% game-changers and 80% marketing. Buy the 8 essentials, skip the rest, and your total spend is under $100 for tools that last years. Compare that to the $200+ people spend on random bundles that end up donated by summer. 💰
The best accessory is a good air fryer to start with. The second best is a small, curated toolkit that actually gets used. 🛠️
🛒 Get the Air Fryer + The Right Accessories
The Miraston 8.5-Qt Viewing Window air fryer ships with the option to bundle our tested accessory kit. Available on all major platforms:
- 🛒 Amazon — {AMAZON_URL}
- 🎵 TikTok Shop — {TIKTOK_URL}
- 👗 SHEIN — {SHEIN_URL}
- 🏬 Walmart — {WALMART_URL}
🛠️ What's the one accessory you can't live without? Drop us a message on the contact page — we're always testing new ideas.