9 Foods You Should Never Air Fry (Seriously)
Certain foods, like leafy greens such as spinach or kale, simply don't belong in the air fryer unless you're intentionally making chips. Shellfish is another ingredient that struggles under the intense heat, often becoming tough or rubbery. Even boneless chicken breast can dry out unless it's breaded or coated. Knowing which foods to skip can save you from wasted ingredients and a lot of cleanup.
After one too many culinary flops, I've officially blacklisted these nine foods from the air fryer.
1. Boneless pork chops
Boneless pork chops dry out too easily in an air fryer.
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A perfectly cooked pork chop is a thing of beauty, but leaner cuts of the other white meat can dry out in a hurry. Bacon, bone-in pork chops and fattier cuts of swine can handle the air fryer, but lean, boneless pork chops and tenderloin tend to dry out when subjected to the blast of high heat. If you're going to use the air fryer to cook pork chops, do so at a lower temperature and use some fat to keep things from getting too dry.
2. Spinach and leafy greens
Crisped spinach and kale will not turn out well in an air fryer.
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Leafy greens are a big "no" when it comes to air-fryer cooking. The hot convection air will crisp most leafy greens such as spinach, kale and chard far beyond anything you'd want to eat. Solid veggies including Brussels sprouts, squash and zucchini fare well in the air fryer, but leafy greens are best when sauteed, stewed or steamed.
3. Steak and most cuts of beef
Steak cooked in an air fryer may end up tough and rubbery.
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Steak reheats well in the air fryer, but it's not an ideal place to cook it for the first time. Air fryer baskets get hot but not hot enough to give the outside of your steak a proper sear. I've tried cooking steaks in the air fryer before. Even fatty, forgiving steaks don't come out as well as when they're cooking on a hot plancha, cast-iron skillet or grill.
The exception to the beef rule is burgers. Ground beef won't get stringy, and the air fryer's intense heat allows you to get a crusty sear without overcooking the middle. Here's how to make a bacon cheeseburger in the air fryer.
Read more: Best Meat Delivery Services
4. Boneless chicken breasts
Unbreaded chicken breasts are not the best candidates.
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Chicken wings, thighs and any bone-in pieces are perfect candidates for the air fryer. Boneless chicken breasts don't have much fat and will dry out easily. Protect them with a little egg batter and breadcrumbs, and you'll be OK, but bare chicken breasts cooked in the air fryer often emerge dry or rubbery.
5. Large cuts of any meat
Pot roast typically needs low and slow methods of cooking.
Ry Crist/CNET
Large cuts of beef, pork and lamb typically do best when cooked using a low-and-slow method such as braising or smoking. Avoid the air fryer with its hot blast of convection air when cooking larger cuts of meat and opt for the Dutch oven, slow cooker or pellet smoker.
6. Naked broccoli
The air fryer will singe broccoli unless you cover it in foil.
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If you wrap your broccoli in foil, you can use the air fryer to roast it (quickly). If you leave it uncovered and exposed to the hot convection air and you'll end up with sizzled broccoli ends that are anything but delicious.
7. Shellfish
Clams and mussels are better for a pot instead of an air fryer.
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Shellfish such as clams and mussels need liquid to cook without drying out. They are also easily overcooked, which can lead to a chewy, rubbery morsel that you don't want anywhere near your plate. Avoid the air fryer when cooking most shellfish.
8. Most baked goods
Cake and cookie recipes don't typically translate well from the oven to an air fryer.Read more: Best Seafood Delivery Services
You can certainly do some baking in the air fryer, but use caution since the air fryer's super convection behaves differently than a normal oven's convection heat.
Baking a cake or batch of cookies in the air fryer using the time and temperature called for in a recipe will often result in an overcooked, dry or burnt result. When baking in an air fryer, use recipes that are specific to an air fryer and don't assume an oven recipe will translate.
9. Large casseroles or layered pasta
Lasagna and deep casserole-style dishes may not warm through before the top starts to burn.
David Watsky/CNET
Because the air fryer cooks fast and the heat comes from above, deep casseroles and layered lasagnas may not cook all the way through before burning on top. If you are going to use the air fryer, set it to bake or a lower temperature than you would use to cook chicken wings or hot dogs.
If you're looking for a great air fryer, here are CNET's top-rated models for 2025. For more, these are the best air-frying toaster ovens for 2025.
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Insomnia is a global epidemic. How do we fix it?
On a special episode (first released on July 24th) of The Excerpt podcast: The question is: Why do we struggle to sleep? Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins The Excerpt to talk about insomnia and what we can do about solving our sleep issues. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Hello, I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is a special episode of the Excerpt. According to a report released by the American Medical Association earlier this year, one-third of American adults experience acute insomnia, an inability to fall or stay asleep for several days at a time, but one in 10 adults suffer from chronic insomnia. That's an inability to fall or stay asleep three nights a week for three months or more. The condition has potentially debilitating health impacts, including an increased risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even car accidents. So the question is, why can't we sleep? Here to help me dig into the issue is Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic who recently went on her own journey to solve her insomnia and who shared her story in the magazine. Thank you for joining me, Jennifer. Jennifer Senior: Thanks for having me. Taylor Wilson: So let's start with I guess a 30,000-foot view of the issue. I know you spoke with a lot of sleep specialists, did a lot of independent research for your piece. Jennifer, what's the big picture here on American's trouble with sleep? Jennifer Senior: Right. Yeah. What's funny, I think the story was a little misnamed. I mean, this is really more story about, well, if you can't sleep, don't feel awful about it because there are so many shaming stories about people, whatever solutions people seek out. I do talk in the beginning about the way that the modern world absolutely conspires against sleep, that it just lays waste to your circadian rhythms. That people work two jobs, 16.4% of us work non-standard hours. If you're a white collar kind of professional, you've got these woodpecker like peck, peck, peck, incursions into your life all night and weekend long from your boss's work sort of never ends. I mean, we're just no longer yoked to the rhythms of the earth anymore. We're just part of this whirl of a wired world. Taylor Wilson: In the course of doing your research, was there something in particular that surprised you most about the problem? Jennifer Senior: I'll tell you what surprised me most, just generally. Whenever I interviewed any expert about this, and it didn't matter what species of expert, they could be an epidemiologist, they could be a neurologist, they could be a psychiatrist, they could be a clinician. Most of them said the same thing. There is a slight misconception that you need eight hours of sleep. There is some data saying this. There is another equally robust data set saying 6.5 to 7.4 is associated with the best health outcomes. Now it's very hard to tell. These studies are observational. They're not randomized. There was all sorts of confounds and problems with this, but this one study in particular had a million people in it. It's been replicated. There are plenty of people who believe this data and people vary. And over the course of a lifetime, your individual sleep capacity could change. In a funny way, that was what surprised me most. Right? This mantra, which is kind of a tyranny, get eight hours or else. Taylor Wilson: Well, you talked Jennifer about the modern world conspiring against us and our sleep, and I guess let's try to outline a few of the possible causes of what you call a public health emergency, right? What can you share with us here on this? Jennifer Senior: About other causes, you mean besides the kind of modernity itself and kids working on... Kids being assigned homework online, kids socializing online. I mean, adolescents are desperate for sleep. They're so hungry for it, and modern high schools and middle schools have them waking up preposterously early when their circadian rhythms are pitched forward. We've got a substantial sandwich generation that's taking care of young kids and their elderly parents. That's going to conspire against it. These are all immutable things. Also, there are elevated levels of anxiety now in our world, and anxiety itself is a huge source of... Or can be a source of sleeplessness, certainly can make one prone. So I mean, those are additional examples I suppose. Taylor Wilson: Let's talk through your story a bit here. When did you first realize that you had an issue with sleep? And walk us through your experience with insomnia. Jennifer Senior: It was 25 years ago and it was a very mysterious onset. I cannot tell you what brought it on to this day. It is a mystery. I had this extremely well-regulated kind of circadian clock. I fell asleep every night at 1:00. I woke up every day at 9:00. I lost my alarm clock. I still woke up at those times. I didn't have to buy a new alarm clock until I had an early flight one day, and yet sometime very close to my 29th birthday when virtually no circumstances in my life had changed one iota, I had a bad night, fell asleep at like 5:00. Thought nothing of it until they became more regular, and then I started doing all-nighters involuntarily, and I felt like I'd been poisoned. And to this day, I don't know what happened, but once that happens, the whole cycle starts to happen, then people suddenly become very afraid of not falling asleep and whatever kicked it off whether it's mysterious or known becomes irrelevant because then what you do is you start getting very agitated and going, oh my God, I'm not sleeping. Oh my God, I'm still not sleeping. Now it's 3:00 in the morning. Now it's 4:00 in the morning. Now it's 5:00 in the morning. Oh my God, I have one more hour, et cetera. Taylor Wilson: Well, you did write in the piece about the many different recommendations that she tried to solve your own sleep issues. What were some of them, Jennifer, and did any of them help? Jennifer Senior: Oh God, I tried all the things. This is before I sought real professional help, but I did all the things. I would took Tylenol PM, which did not work. I did acupuncture, which were lovely, but did not work. I listened to a meditation tape that a friend gave me, did not work. I listened to another one that was for sleep only that did not work. I ran. I always was a runner, but I ran extra, did not work. Gosh, changed my diet. I don't remember. I did all sorts of things. I tried different supplements, Valerian root, all these things. Melatonin, nothing, nothing. Taylor Wilson: You wrote in depth about one therapy that was recommended to you, and that was CBTI. That's cognitive based therapy for insomnia. Jennifer, first, what is this? And second, did you find any success by using this? Jennifer Senior: So cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, as you said, is the gold standard for treating insomnia. It's portable. You can take it with you. It's not like if you leave your sleep meds at home. The main tent pole of it, which is sleep restriction, which I'll get to in a minute, is very hard to do. I found it murder, the kind of easier parts, although they're still in a funny way, kind of paradoxical, are you have to change your thinking around this is the cognitive piece around sleeping and insomnia. You have to decide, okay, I'm not sleeping. So what? Now, this is kind of funny because there's this din surrounding us that says, oh my God, you're not sleeping. You're going to die of a heart attack. You're going to die of an immune disease. You're going to get cancer. All these things, right? You have to set that all aside and decide one more night's sleep that I can't sleep. So what? Right. That's one thing. You have to change your behaviors, deciding that you are going to consistently go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, all that, and not use your bed for anything other than just for sleeping and sex. The hard part and the most powerful part that I found it brutal was the part that said you have to restrict your sleep. If you had only five hours of sleep, but you're in bed for nine hours, you have to choose a wake-up time. Let's say it's 7:00 and then you have to go to bed five hours earlier, 2:00 to s7:00. That's all you can give yourself, and you cannot stop with that schedule until you've slept for the majority of those hours. That's very hard for a sleepless person. And then once you've succeeded, all you get to add on is 15 more minutes of sleep, and then you have to sleep the majority of those hours for three nights running. This is always for three nights running, and the idea is to build up a enough sleep pressure to regularize yourself. You basically capitulate to exhaustion and you start to develop a rhythm. I couldn't stick with it. I was so kind of stupid and depressed with sleeplessness by the time I started it that it probably was impractical and I refused to take drugs to help me fall asleep at the exact right hour, which many clinics recommend. If you're going to go to bed and sleep from 2:00 to 7:00, take something at 1:30 so that you fall asleep at two. But I was afraid of being dependent on drugs, and you can really wean yourself if you do it for a limited amount of time. You can wean yourself anytime really, if you're shrewd about it and if you taper. But I think that I would tell people to try it and to try it sooner rather than later, and to be unafraid of doing it in combination with drugs so that the schedule worked. Taylor Wilson: Well, I am happy you brought up drugs. I did want to bring that up just in terms of what experts are saying about their impact. Even just drugs and alcohol kind of writ large, but sleeping pills specifically. What did you find in researching this in terms of drugs and alcohol? Jennifer Senior: Well, there's a real stigma taking sleep medication, and I'm frankly a little sick of it. I'm not sure why this is so very stigmatized. Like, oh, they're drug addict. They're hooked on sleeping pills. It's framed as addiction, and no one says that someone is addicted to their Ozempic, even though a lifestyle change could perhaps obviate the need. No one says that they are addicted... Oh, that person is totally addicted to their blood pressure medication, even though maybe a change in lifestyle would help change that. Or that they're addicted to their statins, So I sort of bristle. And those who prescribe these medicines say like, look, if the benefit outweighs the risk and they're used properly, sometimes the real side effect is just being dependent on these drugs, and there's a difference between dependence and addiction. A surprisingly small number of people who take these drugs regularly, like benzodiazepines, like Ativan and Ambien and Klonopin, all these things, a surprisingly small number, like 7% increase their doses if they take it every night. So that's very small. However, there are cognitive decrements over time... Or not decrements. It can interfere with your memory and it can increase your odds of falling as you get older. And those are, to me, the real persuasive reasons to get off. Taylor Wilson: I want to back up a minute here to talk about something many may not be aware of, and that's that historically, at least in some eras, people used to sleep in two blocks. What do you know about this? How did this function and really why did this kind of sleep pattern work for some folks? Jennifer Senior: Well, it was sort of, I think, natural. It seemed that this is, and it has not been proven everywhere, but there's plenty of both historical evidence and also some in a lab by this wonderful guy named Tom Ware that shows that if you sort of just put someone in a room, 14 hours of darkness, what will happen is that their sleep will naturally split into two. They'll sleep for a phase, wake up for a phase, and then sleep for a phase again. And historically, there's all sorts of evidence that people would sleep for a phase, get up and read for a while, do some quiet things, do light tasks, maybe sing, maybe have sex, and then go back to bed. So there seemed to be two phases, and this was much easier to do when midnight was actually midnight. You were going bed when the sun had set, or just after were you were tethered to the rhythms of the earth as opposed to a wired electricity run world. Taylor Wilson: What is something you wish you knew when you first started on this journey? Jennifer Senior: To get on it earlier and to not be as afraid... Cognitive behavioral therapy is, I think, often done in conjunction with taking something like Klonopin or Ativan or Ambien, and I was so petrified of becoming hooked on them that I didn't... I refused to take them and I couldn't get my sleep to contract as a result of it. My body was so completely dysregulated and confused about it was so all over the place that I really needed something to regularize it and stabilize it, and I flipped out, and I think if anybody goes and tries CBT, I and their practitioner says to them, and I'm going to have to be on their recommendation, do this in concert with a drug, because you really need it. Don't sit there and freak out and think that you can't or shouldn't, because it happens a lot and people freak out a lot. Taylor Wilson: All right, Jennifer Senior, thank you so much for coming on the Excerpt. Jennifer Senior: Thank you so much for having me. Taylor Wilson: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's the Excerpt. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Insomnia is a global epidemic. How do we fix it? | The Excerpt
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