Can you put metal tins, trays and cookware in an air fryer?

Only if all of these are true

• Must fit with space around it. The tin must sit in the chamber with air space around it on every side. A tray that fills the basket turns the appliance into a poor conventional oven.
• Your manual must permit it. One manufacturer permits a metal or glass dish for its Baking programme specifically. Others restrict accessories to those they authorise. Check yours.
• Must not block the airflow. A solid-based tin blocks airflow underneath by design. That is what you want for a cake and what you do not want for chips.
• Must be rated for the purpose. Use oven-rated cookware. Thin disposable foil trays are light enough to be moved by the fan and belong with foil rather than here.

What the manufacturers actually say

The manufacturers do not always agree, and silence is not permission. Each row below is what one company’s own manual says — or, where it says nothing, the fact that it says nothing.

• Tefal: Permits it

  The manual directs the cook to "Place an oven dish in the appliance's bowl if you want to bake a cake or quiche or if you want to fry fragile ingredients or filled ingredients", and states: "You can use an oven dish in silicon, stainless steel, aluminium, terracotta."

  Tefal Easy Fry Oven & Grill FW5018 — instruction manual (manufacturer copy) — read for a countertop oven with air fry

• Instant: Permits it in specific conditions

  For the Baking programme only, the manual permits a metal or glass baking dish to be used in the appliance.

  Instant Vortex Plus Dual Air Fryer 7.6L — User Manual — read for a dual-basket air fryer

• Tower: Permits it

  The manual instructs the reader to place a baking tin or oven dish in the drawer to bake a cake or quiche, or to cook fragile or filled food.

  Tower T17067 4L Digital Air Fryer — Safety and Instruction Manual

• Cookworks: Says nothing about it

  The manual's chart includes baking rows but does not state a cookware instruction; it warns against metal utensils on the non-stick coating.

  Cookworks 9L Dual Air Fryer KDF-5577DTW — Instruction Manual

What can go wrong

Metal is the least controversial material in this section and the one the manuals are most positive about. Every baking row in every chart read this sprint says to use a tin, and one manufacturer permits a metal or glass baking dish outright for its Baking programme. The constraints are fit and airflow, not safety.

• Can block airflow

  Use the smallest tin that holds the food, and leave a clear gap all round. Never use a tray that spans the whole chamber.

• Can damage the basket coating

  Lower cookware in rather than dropping it, and do not slide metal across the non-stick base. Two manufacturers warn against metal utensils on their coatings for the same reason.

It depends on your appliance

The answer is not the same in every machine. Where the element sits relative to the food, and how hard the fan blows, change what this material does.

• Combination microwave with air fry — Depends on your model

  This is the exception that matters. Metal in a microwave mode is a genuine hazard, and a combination appliance can run modes where it is fine and modes where it is not. The manual governs absolutely here and there is no general answer.

• Basket air fryer — Safe only in specific conditions

  Fit is the constraint. A drawer's usable footprint is smaller than its litres suggest and most standard tins will not leave clearance.

• Oven-style air fryer — Safe only in specific conditions

  A shelf takes a tin more comfortably than a drawer does, with more room around it for air to pass.

Your manual governs

Food contact

Ordinary oven-rated bakeware is intended for food contact at these temperatures. Uncoated aluminium in prolonged contact with acidic food can pit, as it can in an oven.

Evidence and confidence

Things made of this, and whether they are worth owning

• Multi-level rack — Useful for a specific job — 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.
• Skewer rack — Useful for a specific job — Genuinely good at the one job it does, and that job is narrower than the packaging suggests.
• Grill plate — Useful for a specific job — Ridges give contact marks and a different surface. If your machine came with one, use it; buying one separately is a narrower call.
• Silicone-tipped tongs — Genuinely useful — The accessory that protects the most expensive part of the appliance, and manufacturers are unusually united about it.
• Soft-bristled cleaning brush — Genuinely useful — Reaches into perforations and grooves that a sponge cannot, without doing what a scourer would.
• Non-scratch sponge — Genuinely useful — Named directly by manufacturers, and the thing it replaces — a scourer — is prohibited by every manual in this catalogue that mentions the subject.
• Replacement basket or crisper plate — Useful for a specific job — The part that decides how long an air fryer lasts, and the one whose availability almost nobody checks before buying the machine.

Use this instead

• Oven-safe glass — Explicitly permitted by one manufacturer for baking. Thermal shock, not heat, is the thing to manage.
• Silicone liners and moulds — Heavy enough not to be lifted, and rated above the temperatures these appliances reach. The airflow question is the one that remains.
• Ramekins and small oven dishes — Small enough to leave airflow around them, which is what makes them the most practical cookware for a drawer machine.