You’re Not Still Making Stuffing in the Oven, Are You?

Stuffing — or dressing if you’re southern — is an undisputed Thanksgiving staple. If you like yours crispy as all get-out, there’s only one way to make it. Making stuffing in the air fryer is not only faster than in the clunky wall oven, it will free up space in your big cooker for the turkey and other sides, not to mention turn out the crispiest stuffing — sorry, dressing — in Thanksgiving history. 

The beauty of the air fryer is that it cooks so fast it’ll crisp the crust before the middle has time to dry out. Oh, and did we mention it’s fast and more eco-friendly than the wall oven?

Wait, no air fryer? Here’s everything you need to know about the countertop cookers, and the best ones to buy in 2024. Now that we’ve taken care of that. Here’s how to make the fastest, easiest, crispiest stuffing of your life. 

What you’ll need for air fryer stuffing

Before you start heating up the air fryer and sauteing celery and onions with a rush of quick stuffing moxie, the most important element you’re going to need here is an oven-safe dish or pan that fits within the basket of your air fryer — maybe something nice you can serve it in. 

This is important: Do not make stuffing directly in your air fryer basket. That’s a recipe for the kind of hassle we’re generally trying to avoid during big family dinners.

You can basically use any stuffing recipe you like, making sure to scale it to the size of your baking dish. My air fryer is about as small as they come, but a six-inch round cake pan with about two inches of depth fit perfectly, and easily made about four servings, probably five if you consider all the other carbs being served on Thanksgiving.

Certain ceramic dishes will work, so long as they are heat safe, as will disposable aluminum baking dishes. Your only real limitation is the size of your air fryer. If you’ve got a family-size appliance, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to make a family’s worth of stuffing in your air fryer.

I went the doctored box stuffing route for this experiment, enhancing a package of Stove Top cornbread stuffing mix with celery, onions, sausage and apple. The dry components were moistened with a mixture of chicken broth, half and half, melted butter, and an egg. For creamier stuffing, you’ll want to start with the mixture pretty wet. Make sure to leave some time for it to sit and hydrate before baking.

The benefits of air fryer stuffing

One of the big challenges of a big holiday dinner is making space for everything to cook and come out hot at the same time. The air fryer can help with this. Employing smaller appliances such as your toaster oven, microwave and yes, even air fryer, can free up real estate for other projects. When you have eight or more dishes working at once, not only do you save space in your oven, but theoretically you can also save kitchen counter space, since the air fryer is essentially mobile. 

The stuffing mixture can be made well ahead of time, even by a couple of days, so when it’s go-time you can plug in the air fryer anywhere in your home where there’s electricity. (I once rested the Thanksgiving turkey on my bedroom floor for lack of kitchen space, and when I tested bread machines for CNET, I had several running in every room in my house. So, as a small-apartment dweller, I’m an advocate for thinking outside of the kitchen.)

In addition to the logistical benefits, the air fryer cooks the stuffing quickly and produces an outcome that’s soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. I daresay another Thanksgiving duality is between crunchy stuffing and that which is almost bread pudding. With an air fryer, you can easily have both in one go.

Cooking stuffing in the air fryer

Once your stuffing mixture is assembled in your air fryer-size cooking vessel, which again, can be done ahead of time, you’ll cover it and cook it initially for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. This should be adequate for most wide and shallow pans that will work in an air fryer.

Depending on how snugly your dish fits within the air fryer basket, you may need tongs or another instrument to remove it. Since the air fryer doesn’t radiate heat when the drawer is open in the same way an oven does, it’s easy to forget that its contents are hot. Remove the covering and cook for another five to 10 minutes to achieve a crispy exterior. The convection action and close quarters of the air fryer do this extremely efficiently. For a gently crispy top on your stuffing, the final step can head more toward the five-minute mark. For crunchy stuffing, 10 minutes will work best.

For my trial attempt at air fryer stuffing, the initial cook of 15 minutes was followed by a full 10 minutes uncovered, for an outcome that was golden brown with a satisfying bit of crunch and a soft interior.

The verdict on air fryer stuffing

The only challenging element of making stuffing in the air fryer, for me at least, was finding an appropriate dish that could work in the confines of my extra small appliance. From there it couldn’t have been easier, and the outcome was as successful as anything that’s ever come out of an oven in my Thanksgiving history. Since it also made it extremely easy to make stuffing in a smaller portion than I’d normally do, air fryer stuffing may well make an appearance at my dinner table far more often than just Thanksgiving.