Our Favorite Air Fryer

Feeding eight people on a weeknight is a logistics problem. When the little ones are melting down and the older two have practice at six, nobody has forty minutes to stand at the oven flipping trays of chicken. For a while our answer was way too much takeout, and Mom will tell you the receipts got a little embarrassing.

The Ninja XL with the 6.5-quart basket is what pulled us out of that hole. The XL basket is genuinely big enough to crisp dinner for all eight of us in one batch — a full load of fries, or enough chicken that we’re not running a second round while half the table waits. It crisps everything we throw at it, from frozen nuggets the little ones live on to the vegetables we’re always trying to sneak past them, and it does it fast enough to matter on a practice night.

We considered a couple of smaller air fryers and one of those big oven-style ones with the racks. The smaller baskets were non-starters — cooking dinner in three shifts defeats the whole purpose — and the oven style felt like more to wipe down than we wanted. The Ninja XL split the difference: enough capacity for a crowd, and the basket just wipes clean instead of turning into a soak-and-scrub project. At $119.99 it’s earned its permanent spot on the counter, which in our kitchen is the highest honor a gadget can get.