The viral parchment paper liner hack for air fryers works, but the TikTok trick is kind of a waste of time

Welcome to AirFryDay, where — you guessed it — every Friday Mashable covers the latest trends, dispenses advice, and reviews recipes for your air fryer.

I’m all for making cooking less of a hassle. Cooking is perhaps my favorite hobby and, as such, I want it to be as accessible and approachable as possible.

Kitchen hacks often promise ease, but I’ve found they often don’t deliver. Single-use tools, for instance, have found a million ways to reinvent the knife. A recent air fryer hack on TikTok — where you create a liner out of parchment paper to reduce mess — proved to be more of the same.

In case you haven’t seen it, there have been a number of different versions of this hack. The basic idea is to cover the bottom of your air fryer basket to make it easier to clean. I decided to base my test on this version from @ketoaccountable for a couple of reasons. One: It was super popular, racking up nearly 2.5 million views. Two: It involved punching holes in the parchment paper to allow for air flow, which I feel is necessary because rapidly circulated, hot air that hits the food at all angles is the entire point of an air fryer. If you cover the whole basket with parchment paper, you’re defeating the purpose.

The process from @ketoaccountable was relatively straightforward. Cut a sheet of parchment to roughly the size of your air fryer basket, fold the paper, then punch holes. Lay it down inside the air fryer basket and, presto, you have a liner. Here’s what their process looked like.

Easy enough.
Credit: Screenshots: TikTok / @ketoaccountable

I set out to test it myself but here’s the TL;DR: for most people, doing the hack isn’t worth the time it takes to actually do the hack.

I needed to test something really messy because, well, a liner should help with the messiest meals. I settled on a chicken thigh, marinated in a sticky soy and honey mixture. I also tossed in some broccoli, because veggies are amazing in the air fryer and because broccoli florets make a huge mess. Bits of broccoli get everywhere when you cook it, so a liner should, in theory, help.

I followed the steps of creating the liner. I cut a sheet until it was roughly the size of my six-quart basket. I folded it and punched holes, albeit with a less-perfect pattern than in @ketoaccountable’s TikTok. Side note: Who has a hole puncher lying around anymore? Somehow I dug one up out of Mashable’s supply closet. Anyway, I laid down the liner before adding food.

The liner, all set to go.
Credit: Mashable

From there, I fired up the air fryer until the internal temp of the chicken registered 165 degrees and the broccoli was nice and charred. I removed the food carefully and, looking at the liner, it might’ve helped a bit. It definitely soaked up a portion of the rendered chicken fat, as well as the cooked-off marinade. But still, lots of fat and florets made their way below the parchment and grate. There was definitely a cooked-on mess that would take a little effort to remove. The parchment liner did not stop all the mess, and I still had to wash the basket and grate.

The parchment paper did catch some of the mess.
Credit: Mashable

Despite the parchment, my air fryer grate had a fair amount of cooked-on marinade and other mess.
Credit: Mashable

That gets to my point. For many people, this liner hack is pointless. If your air fryer looks like mine — a nonstick basket with a nonstick grate — then it’s super easy to clean. Warm water, a sponge, and a few minutes and you’re done. That’s the magic of nonstick material. Making a parchment liner takes only a few minutes at most, but that’s time wasted for many air fryers. You’re adding a step that doesn’t cut out the same amount of time during the wash later. It’s wasting both materials and time.

Now a big caveat: If your air fryer has a mesh basket, then I might consider this liner hack. Mesh baskets have tiny openings that truly suck to clean. Small bits of food or sauce can get lodged in those tiny spaces, making it hard to get with a sponge. For that sort of air fryer — typically found on older models — I might consider using this hack. As for me, I doubt I’ll ever be reaching for a hole puncher again.