For Christmas 2024, I was kindly gifted my first ever air fryer. While I was no stranger to the appliance, with my parents having owned one for almost a decade, I was excited to finally have one of my own.

While I have happily been using my air fryer to help cook my meals for the past seven months or so, one thing I always dread is having to clean it. Most air fryer trays are suitable to go in the dishwasher, but I don't have the luxury of owning one.

As much as it may be an easy task for some, for me it's a bit more of a challenge. With only a sink to aid my cleaning, I'm always stuck with having to scrub it clean by hand.

While the whole concept of air fryers is that you don't have to use lots of oil in order to cook your meal, some oil is sometimes needed for some dishes in order to prevent them from going dry. But this, of course, can lead to some stubborn oil residue that can be a pain to get rid of.

So when I discovered this  hack for cleaning your air fryer without having to scrub away the greasy stains, I was instantly intrigued.

Apparently, all you have to do is pop a dishwasher tablet under the removable plate inside before filling it up with water and pressing start.

Hearing about this, I did think it sounded too good to be true. Because of this, I was slightly sceptical as I picked up some cheap dishwasher tablets at the store, not knowing if I'd actually be able to use them all. 

As I knew I wanted to make the most of this test, I purposely cooked some oily salmon in the air fryer the night before, just so I could see just how well it would be cleaned off.

I then placed the dishwasher tabled under the tray before putting the tray back in and filling it up with water, making sure the tray was covered. Then I left it at 180 degrees for 10 minutes to make it work its supposed magic.

When the 10 minutes were up, I opened up the air fryer and was met with the water, which had now turned a mucky brown. Clearly something had happened.

I went over to the sink and poured out the water to find that the dishwashing tablet hadn't fully dissolved. After reading online, I learned that sometimes you might have to run it twice in order to get the full effect, however I didn't feel like this was needed as the rest of the air fryer did appear clean enough.

While it did need to be wiped with a sponge, mainly to remove the residue of the dishwasher tablet, it did leave the air fryer a lot cleaner than if I had scrubbed it by hand. 

After having dried it with a kitchen towel, you could see that there was no oil residue left inside, and I'd normally have to soak the tray in water to be able to remove it by hand.

Overall, I was very impressed with this cleaning hack and will be using it again, not only because I have a whole packet of dishwasher tablets to use up, but also because it saved me from having to fight against the frustraiting grease stains.