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AirfryerHQ

Racks and extra levels

Dehydrating rack

Only useful if your machine goes low enough to dehydrate at all, and most of them do not.

AirfryerHQ’s verdict

You probably do not need this

Widely sold, rarely needed. Something you already own usually does the same job.

Dehydrating needs a chamber that will hold around 40–60°C for several hours, and most basket air fryers will not go below 80°C. Buying a rack for a machine that cannot reach the temperature buys nothing. Where a machine does dehydrate, it usually ships with the trays or the manufacturer sells the matching set — and even then, the honest comparison is with a dedicated dehydrator, which does the job better for a similar price and does not tie up the appliance for eight hours.

What it actually does

Holds thin slices in several stacked layers of fine mesh so warm air passes over all of them, over a period of hours rather than minutes.

A set of fine mesh trays that stack inside an air fryer, sold for drying fruit, herbs and jerky. The rack is not the constraint — the appliance's minimum temperature is.

When it helps and when it does not

When it helps

  • Machines with a genuine dehydrate mode and a temperature range that reaches down to about 60°C or below
  • Drying herbs, apple or banana slices and making jerky, where the appliance would otherwise be idle

When it gets in the way

  • Any machine whose minimum temperature is 80°C or above, where the food cooks rather than dries
  • Any evening you also wanted to cook, since dehydrating runs for six to eight hours
  • Fine mesh generally, which is the hardest thing in this list to get properly clean

What it does to the airflow

Adds a cooking level, and shades the one below it

Several stacked layers of mesh is a lot of obstruction, which matters much less here than elsewhere because dehydrating wants gentle, prolonged air rather than fast air. It is the one application where blocking the airflow is not the problem.

What to use instead

Check your machine's minimum temperature first — it is on its model page here where we hold it. If it does not go low enough, no rack will help. If it does, a wire cooling rack you already own will hold one layer, and one layer is enough to find out whether you will ever do this twice.

Using it safely

  • Stacked trays must not block the air outlet or approach the element.
  • Long low-temperature runs are unattended cooking by any reasonable definition, and every manufacturer in this catalogue tells you not to leave an air fryer running unattended. That tension is real and is the reader's to resolve.

What specific manufacturers say

Statements read from a named model’s own documentation. AirfryerHQ does not infer that an accessory fits a machine from its advertised capacity, and no manufacturer here publishes the dimensions that would let anybody do so.

  • Ninja Foodi MAX Health Grill & Air Fryer AG551UK

    This model publishes a dehydrate chart at 60°C with times of six to eight hours for 3mm slices of apple, banana, beetroot, mango, mushroom and pineapple — which is what a machine that can genuinely dehydrate looks like in its own documentation.

    Ninja Foodi MAX Health Grill & Air Fryer AG551UK — Inspiration Guide and cooking charts

Which machines it suits

Makes sense in: Basket air fryer, Oven-style air fryer, Countertop oven with air fry, Multicooker with air fry.

Looking after it

Fine mesh traps sugary residue in every aperture. Soak it immediately after use; once dried fruit sugar has set on mesh it is close to unrecoverable.

Evidence and confidence

Moderate confidenceWell supported, but from a narrower base of sources than we would like.
Applies to
Applies generally
Why this rating
The verdict rests on a temperature comparison anybody can check: one manufacturer publishes dehydrating at 60°C, another publishes a machine whose range stops at 80°C. The accessory is useless in the second case regardless of its quality, which is why the page tells the reader to check their own minimum temperature before buying anything.
Last reviewed
2026-08-30

What this does not cover

  • The minimum temperature is not published for most models in this catalogue, so for most machines the question cannot be answered from our records and the reader must look at their own manual.
  • AirfryerHQ has not bought, fitted or used any accessory. Every judgement here is reasoned from what the accessory does physically and from what manufacturers publish about it.
Sources (3)

  • Ninja Foodi MAX Health Grill & Air Fryer AG551UK — Inspiration Guide and cooking charts (PDF)

    SharkNinja Europe Limited — Manufacturer cooking chart (United Kingdom)

    Relied on for: A published dehydrate chart at 60°C for six to eight hours across six fruits and vegetables, establishing both the temperature dehydrating actually needs and the duration it takes.

    States this directly

    Passage read and verified

    Retrieved 2026-08-13 from argos-support.co.uk

    Retrieved from Argos's manual library for Argos product 735/0124, published alongside the instruction booklet as a second document.

  • Tower T17038 Xpress 11L 5-in-1 Air Fryer Oven with Rotisserie — Instruction Manual (PDF)

    RKW Ltd (Tower Housewares) — Manufacturer manual (United Kingdom)

    Relied on for: A published temperature range starting at 80°C, which is an example of the machine this accessory cannot help.

    States this directly

    Passage read and verified

    Retrieved 2026-08-13 from argos-support.co.uk

    Retrieved from Argos's manual library for Argos product 363/6653.

  • AirfryerHQ assessment of airflow, element proximity and material behaviour

    AirfryerHQ — Calculated or inferred by AirfryerHQ (Not jurisdictional)

    Relied on for: The mechanism this is read against: forced convection, boundary-layer disruption and a small chamber.

    AirfryerHQ's interpretation of what it says

    Citation checked — the document exists and is described correctly

AirfryerHQ sells nothing and earns nothing here. There are no affiliate links, no sponsored placements and no brand recommendations anywhere in this section. The verdict above is what we think, arrived at before anybody asked whether it would sell anything.

Cooking pages this affects

Worth reading

Others in this category

  • Useful for a specific job

    Multi-level rack

    It adds a level. It does not add capacity, and one manufacturer states plainly that only one level may be used in air-fry mode.