By the Air Fryer UK Guide Team · Updated May 2026 · Independent, reader-supported

Best Air Fryer Accessories UK 2025: Liners, Racks & Baking Tins Ranked

Most air fryers arrive with a basket and nothing else. That's fine for chips and chicken thighs, but if you want to bake, roast on multiple levels, or stop spending twenty minutes scrubbing baked-on grease, a few well-chosen accessories make a real difference. This guide covers the categories that actually earn their drawer space — with sizing advice so you don't buy something that won't fit.

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Why Accessories Are Worth Considering

Air fryers are sealed, high-velocity ovens. That means standard oven trays and tins often don't fit, and the curved basket walls make conventional bakeware pointless. Purpose-made accessories are shaped to maximise the usable space inside your specific model — and since most are under £15, the payoff-to-cost ratio is unusually good.

The one rule: measure your basket before buying. Internal basket dimensions vary significantly even within the same brand family. A 5.5-litre Cosori and a 5.5-litre Ninja may have completely different internal footprints.

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Silicone Liners: The Most Useful £6 You'll Spend

Silicone liners sit inside the basket and catch drips, marinades, and breadcrumbs before they can bake onto the mesh. They're reusable, dishwasher safe, and — crucially — they don't restrict airflow the way parchment discs sometimes do, because the silicone walls keep food lifted off the base while still allowing hot air to circulate.

What to look for:

• Round vs square: Round liners suit most single-drawer baskets. Square or rectangular ones are better for dual-zone models like the Ninja Double Stack.
• Height: A liner with 4–5 cm walls will contain most splatter. Anything shorter than 3 cm is barely worth it.
• Size: For a 4–6 litre basket, a 20 cm round liner is usually correct. For 6–8 litre baskets, go to 22–24 cm. Always check the listed diameter against your basket's internal measurement — not the advertised fryer capacity.

Silicone liners do slightly reduce crisping on the underside of food. If you're cooking something that needs maximum crunch (battered fish, for example), remove the liner or use the basket base directly.

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Multi-Layer Racks: Double Your Cooking Space

A two- or three-tier rack lets you cook, say, salmon fillets on one level and asparagus on another simultaneously. For households cooking more than one portion, this is probably the single highest-impact accessory.

Most racks are made from 304 stainless steel and come with small skewers for kebabs — ignore the skewers, they're rarely useful, but the rack itself earns its keep immediately.

Sizing guidance:

• Compact fryers (2–3 litre): A 16–18 cm rack fits most basket types. Cooking space per level is small, so think single portions.
• Mid-size (4–6 litre): 20 cm racks are the sweet spot. Two tiers give you enough room to cook a full meal for two.
• Large (7 litre+): 22–24 cm racks, and some oven-style air fryers accept three-tier versions — worth checking the manufacturer's accessories page first.

The trade-off with racks is height: food on the top tier will sit much closer to the heating element. Watch it carefully for the first few cooks and reduce temperature by 10–15°C if the top layer browns too fast.

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Grill Pans and Crisper Plates

Most air fryer baskets have a solid or lightly perforated base. A dedicated grill pan or perforated crisper plate replaces that base with a heavily punctured surface, dramatically increasing airflow around the bottom of whatever you're cooking. The result is noticeably crisper undersides on things like burgers, sausages, and halloumi.

Look for grill pans with a raised ridge pattern — these lift food just enough to prevent steam from pooling beneath it, which is the main enemy of crispiness.

Note on compatibility: Some brands (Philips, in particular) sell proprietary grill pans designed for specific basket models. These are often slightly better-fitting than universal options, but typically cost £20–30 more. The universal stainless steel versions work perfectly well for most purposes.

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Baking Tins: Cakes, Frittatas, and Bread Rolls

Round cake tins sized 15–18 cm fit most mid-to-large air fryers and open up a genuinely different category of cooking. A 6-inch (15 cm) springform tin is the most versatile single purchase here — it handles cheesecakes, sponges, quiches, and frittatas, and the removable base makes extraction much easier than a fixed-bottom tin in a deep basket.

Muffin and cupcake trays also work well, provided you find a silicone version rather than metal — silicone flexes enough to fit into baskets that a rigid metal tray won't clear. A 6-cup silicone muffin tray at around 19 cm diameter fits a 5–7 litre basket in most cases.

What doesn't work well:

• Standard loaf tins are usually too long for the basket, even in large fryers.
• Tall Bundt tins frequently foul the heating element or lid — check maximum height clearance before buying.
• Dark-coated non-stick tins can cause overbrowning; light-coloured or uncoated stainless tins give better results.

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Skewer Sets and Rotisserie Cages

If your air fryer is an oven-style model with a rotisserie function (common in Ninja Foodi and Tower Vortx variants), a rotisserie cage is worth owning. It holds smaller items — prawns, chopped vegetables, chickpeas — while they rotate, giving even browning without any intervention.

For standard drawer-style fryers, skewer sets are more limited in usefulness. The basket depth is rarely enough to let long skewers sit horizontally, so look for short (15–18 cm) versions that fit diagonally if you want to do kebabs.

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What to Skip

• Paper liners (perforated parchment): Useful in a pinch, but single-use and prone to flying up into the heating element at high temperatures if the basket isn't well loaded. Silicone is better in almost every scenario.
• Plastic-handled tongs: The basket environment gets hot enough to soften or discolour some plastics. Use stainless or silicone-tipped metal tongs.
• Branded accessory kits: These 8- or 10-piece sets look like value but typically include several items (egg bite moulds, tiny spatulas) you'll use once and forget. Buy what you'll actually use.

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Getting the Sizing Right

Before purchasing anything, write down three measurements: internal basket diameter (or length × width for rectangular baskets), internal basket depth, and maximum internal height to the heating element. Most product listings include compatible fryer models, but the measurements are more reliable than brand-matching — manufacturers frequently update basket dimensions between generations without changing the model name.

The accessories in this guide cover 80% of what genuinely improves everyday air fryer cooking. Start with a silicone liner and a two-tier rack, and you'll have covered both the cleaning problem and the capacity problem in one go.