How do I cook an air fryer or slow cooker recipe in the oven instead?

The catalogue is full of guides converting oven recipes to an air fryer or a slow cooker. Going the other way is at least as common — a recipe found online assumes kit you do not have — and the conversion is not simply the reverse, because each appliance changes something the oven does differently.

Step by step

1. For an air fryer recipe, understand what you are replacing.An air fryer is a small fan oven with a very fast fan and a basket that lets air reach all sides. It cooks faster because the space is tiny and the airflow is aggressive, not because it is hotter. In a big oven you compensate with a hotter setting, a preheated tray, and space around the food.
2. Set the oven about 20°C above the air fryer figure, fan on.If the air fryer recipe says 180°C, use about 200°C in a fan oven. The extra compensates for the slower air movement and the larger cold space. Preheat fully, and preheat the tray as well — food landing on hot metal starts crisping immediately.
3. Expect 1.5 to 2 times the time and check early.A 15-minute air fryer job is usually 25–30 minutes in the oven. Check at the earlier figure. Chips, wings and anything breaded want turning once, at about the halfway point, because in an oven only the top surface is getting the airflow.
4. Use one layer, high shelf, and a rack if you have one.The whole point of the basket is that air reaches every side. In an oven, a single spaced layer on the top third shelf gets you most of that. A wire rack over a tray gets you the rest, at the cost of harder washing up. Food piled up will steam.
5. For a slow cooker recipe, use a lidded casserole in a low oven.A slow cooker holds food at a bare simmer with almost no evaporation. The oven equivalent is a heavy casserole with a well-fitting lid at 140–150°C, which is low enough that the contents sit just below a simmer rather than boiling.
6. Convert the slow cooker time roughly.8 hours on low or 4 hours on high is broadly 2 to 2.5 hours in a 150°C oven for a stew of cut pieces, and 3 hours or more for a large whole joint. These are starting points — check for tenderness with a fork rather than trusting the arithmetic, because cut size matters more than either number.
7. Do not add extra liquid, and do brown first.Slow cooker recipes are already written with reduced liquid because nothing evaporates. A lidded oven casserole also loses very little, so keep the recipe's quantity. And take the opportunity the oven gives you: brown the meat and the vegetables properly in the casserole on the hob first, which is the step that makes an oven version taste better than the slow cooker original.
8. Check the liquid level once, an hour in.If the lid does not seal well the liquid will drop. Top up with hot stock or water to keep the solids roughly covered, and if it is reducing fast, add a sheet of foil under the lid.

Tips

• A slow cooker recipe converted to the oven usually tastes better, because you get browning that the slow cooker cannot give and a little reduction at the surface that concentrates the sauce.
• Anything with dairy or a delicate vegetable stirred in near the end of a slow cooker recipe goes in near the end of the oven version too. The conversion applies to the long stage, not to the finishing steps.
• If your oven runs cool — most do — a slow cooker conversion at 150°C may sit well under a simmer and take much longer. An oven thermometer resolves this in one use.
• For an air fryer recipe with a small quantity, a toaster oven or a grill with the door shut can be closer in behaviour than a full-size oven.

Common mistakes

• Using the same temperature the air fryer recipe gives — The food browns too slowly for the time given, so it dries out before it crisps. The oven needs a higher setting to do the same job in a comparable time.
• Adding water to a slow cooker recipe cooked in the oven — The recipe already assumes near-zero evaporation and so does a lidded casserole. Extra liquid gives you a thin, washed-out sauce that then has to be reduced separately.

Questions people ask