Are Air Fryer Liners Safe?

My air fryer is one of our go-to appliances for after-school snacks, weekend dinners, and pretty much everything in between.

But are air fryer liners safe? I started asking myself this while writing for MKS, when I realized something I probably should have checked much earlier that our air fryer basket has a non-stick coating.

Of course, by then I already knew what I was looking for in a safer air fryer. But our air fryer is fairly new and I had been using baking paper to cook our food, so I thought we are safe.

Then I started seeing all those Shorts and videos about air fryer liners and the whole question of aluminum leaching.

Honestly, I was confused too.

So I decided to get to the bottom of it for my own family as much as for you.

Are air fryer liners safe? And more importantly, which material is the better choice for cooking our food in an air fryer with a non-stick basket?

I went down the rabbit hole and looked at parchment paper, silicone, aluminium foil and wax paper.

Here’s what I found.

First, the One That Really Isn’t for the Air Fryer: Wax Paper

Let’s start with the easy one.

Wax paper and parchment paper look very similar, but they are made for completely different jobs.

Wax paper has a thin coating of paraffin wax (a food-safe grade) of the same wax family used in candles, purified for food contact. That part isn’t the issue.

The issue is that even the food-safe version has a very low melting point, generally somewhere between 115°F and 150°F.

An air fryer can easily reach 300–400°F, so that wax doesn’t just soften, it melts, smokes, and can genuinely catch fire. It was never designed to survive anything hotter than your fridge.

Air Fryer Parchment Paper Liners- is it Safe?

This is where things got much easier for me.

Parchment paper or baking paper, is made to withstand much higher temperatures than wax paper. Many products are rated to around 425–450°F, although you should always check the temperature rating on the packet you’re using.

And there is one important catch.

never leave a loose sheet of parchment in an empty, running air fryer.

The fan can lift lightweight paper and push it towards the heating element. That’s where the fire risk comes in. This actually happened in our kitchen but thankfully I was at home and smell the smoke before the alarm.

• I put the parchment in with the food already on top of it, so the food holds it down.

• I also cut it to fit the basket rather than letting it come up the sides.

• And I prefer perforated parchment liners for air fryer because the holes allow the hot air to circulate around the food. (I too learned it recently)

Since I started looking into all of this, parchment paper liner has become my go-to for my air fryer.

What About the Aluminium Foil?

This is the one that started me down this whole rabbit hole.

As I said, I used to cook salmon in foil all the time . My go to recipe was Salmon with lemon, garlic, olive oil, wrap it up and put it in the oven. Easy. Delicious. Everyone eats it.

Then I discovered that aluminium can migrate from foil into food, and that heat, salt and acidic ingredients can increase that migration.

One study on marinated versus plain meat and fish found the difference isn’t small. Marinated duck breast came out at 45.18 mg/kg of aluminium, compared to just 0.61 mg/kg for the same cut cooked without the marinade.

Lemon is acidic. So my beloved lemon-and-garlic salmon suddenly made me stop and think.

That doesn’t mean I think I was doing something terrible all those years. It means I learned something I hadn’t known before and once I knew, I wanted to make a different choice where I could.

That’s why, these days, I use parchment paper for recipes like this instead.

And that’s really the approach I’m taking with the air fryer too.

I’m not trying to convince you that aluminium foil is some kind of kitchen villain. I’m simply asking: if I have another material that does the job, why wouldn’t I choose that one?

For my kitchen, that’s enough reason to reach for parchment first.

Are Silicone Air Fryer Liners Safe?

Silicone was the next thing I looked at because, honestly, the idea of a reusable liner is appealing.

No throwing away parchment every time. Just wash it and use it again.

But again, I didn’t want to stop at “it’s food-grade silicone, so it must be fine.”

Research published in 2025 found that silicone bakeware can release small amounts of chemicals called siloxanes when heated. The release was higher with new silicone products and with fatty foods.

The good part? The research found that this release dropped substantially around 95% after several uses.

So here’s my hack: before I ever put real food on a new silicone liner, I run it in the air fryer a handful of times with nothing on it but some baking marbles or an empty ramekin to weigh it down.

The research only tested this in an oven, not specifically in an air fryer, but the logic should hold either way: you’re letting most of that initial release happen into the air, not into your dinner.

The studies suggest 2-3 cycles gets you most of the way there, but I’m a ‘give it a bit of extra margin’ kind of person, so I do it 6-7 times, with the window open or the extractor on. After that, I use it normally.

If you’re interested in silicone specifically, I’ve gone much deeper into the research here:

Is Silicone Bakeware Actually Safe? What the Latest Research Found (coming soon)

So After All That… What Am I Actually Using?

Well, I started this investigation because I didn’t know either.

After looking at the different materials, this is where I’ve landed for my own kitchen:

• Parchment paper: My first choice. I use perforated parchment and put it in with the food already on top.
• Silicone: A good reusable option that I’m comfortable considering, provided it’s good-quality, food-grade silicone.
• Aluminium foil: Not my first choice, particularly with acidic, salty or marinated foods. If parchment can do the job, that’s what I’ll use.
• Wax paper: No. It’s not designed for the heat of an air fryer.

And there’s one rule that applies regardless of which liner you choose:

Don’t put a loose liner into a running air fryer without food weighing it down.

That was actually the most useful thing I learned while researching this.

So if you were confused about are air fryer liners safe, you’re definitely not the only one.

I was confused too.

I just wanted to work out what I was happy to use in my own kitchen especially with a non-stick basket and thought I’d share what I found.

Sources

• Kubová et al., Food Science & Nutrition — the peer-reviewed study behind the marinated vs. non-marinated aluminium figures above: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6804775/
• A second independent peer-reviewed study on aluminium migration from foil (chicken, beef, fish): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696975/
• FDA 21 CFR 178.3710 — Petroleum wax, the actual food-contact regulation for food-grade paraffin: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-178/subpart-D/section-178.3710
• Wickfusion — Food-Grade vs Candle-Grade Wax Explained: https://wickfusion.com/materials-and-ingredients/food-grade-vs-candle-grade-wax-explained/
• Silicone siloxane research — full citations in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389425025105