Oven to Air Fryer Conversion Calculator: Temp and Time

Most recipes are written for an oven, so you need to work out the air fryer settings yourself. Put in the oven temperature and time from your recipe and this gives you a starting air fryer temperature, a cooking time and the minute to start checking. It uses the rule of thumb most often given for converting recipes: set the air fryer about 20C below a conventional oven recipe and take about a fifth off the time. A fan recipe has already had its 20C taken off, so it goes in at the same number.

How the conversion works

An air fryer is a small fan oven. The element sits just above the food and a powerful fan pushes hot air around a basket that holds far less than an oven cavity, so food browns and cooks faster than it would at the same setting in a full-size oven. That is why the usual advice is to drop the temperature and shorten the time rather than copy the oven figures across.

The calculator first turns your recipe into a conventional oven temperature. Gas mark and Fahrenheit are read off the standard UK oven chart, and a fan figure has 20C added back on. It then takes 20C off for the air fryer, rounds to the nearest 5C because that is how most dials step, and caps it at your machine's top setting. The time is cut by a fifth, and it tells you to start checking at about 70% of the oven time, because no two air fryers run quite the same.

Getting good results

• One layer, not a pile. The time assumes air can reach every piece. If food is heaped up, cook it in batches or add a few minutes and shake more often.
• Shake or turn halfway. The heat comes from above, so the top browns first.
• Use a probe for meat. The Food Standards Agency's guidance is that poultry, pork, burgers and sausages should be steaming hot all the way through, with no pink meat and clear juices. A thermometer at the thickest point makes this a measurement, not a guess.
• Frozen food often has air fryer instructions on the pack now. Where it does, use those over any rule of thumb.
• Big joints and long braises belong in the oven. A whole turkey or a slow-cooked casserole will not fit a basket or benefit from it; that is a job for the range cooker.

If you only need a temperature in a different unit, the oven temperature conversion calculator covers gas mark, fan, Fahrenheit and the AGA ovens. For a full Sunday lunch, the roast dinner timing calculator tells you when everything goes in.