Perfect Air Fryer French Fries (Seasoned 4 Ways!)

This recipe is sponsored by ZenChef. All opinions are 100% my own.

Making perfect air fryer french fries can seem a little bit tricky. Here are key dos and don'ts, plus four delicious ways to season your air fries!

Table of Contents

• How to Make Perfect French Fries in Your Air Fryer
• Air Frying Your French Fries
• Common Air Fryer French Fries Mistakes
• Making Frozen French Fries in the Air Fryer
• About My Air Fryer
• Seasoned Air Fryer French Fries Recipe

Chances are, if you purchased an air fryer, one of the things you were most excited about cooking was french fries. And maybe your first batch of air fries came out...underwhelming. I'm here for you.

How to Make Perfect French Fries in Your Air Fryer

Making perfect air fryer fries is all about know what to do (and what NOT to do). Let's get into a few key things to know about making air fryer french fries.

Choose the right potatoes.

When it comes to air fryer french fries, Russet potatoes are your friend. You can make fries out of other potatoes, but russets (pictured above) will be your best bet.

Don't sweat the soak.

I know, the book that came with your air fryer (and many of the air fries recipes you'll find online) says that you need to soak your cut potatoes to remove excess starch. You certainly can soak, but I find that this is a waste of time.

Unsoaked potatoes yield perfectly fine air fryer french fries. Plus, skipping the soak shaves a lot of prep time off of your recipe!

Cut into uniform pieces.

When you're prepping your potatoes for the air fryer, you want your fries to be pretty much uniform in thickness. Different lengths are fine, but make sure they're all about the same width.

If you have a mix of fat and skinny fries, you'll end up with some that are burnt and others that are undercooked.

Air Frying French Fries

Once you're ready to cook, time and temperature are key.

Cook your fries at 400F for 20 minutes, and don't forget to shake once or twice during the cooking time! Shaking helps make sure your fries cook up in a uniform way.

The cooking time will vary depending on how full your basket is. More circulating air means less cooking time, so a half batch of fries will cook more quickly than a full, 2-potato batch.

When your fryer beeps, pull a fry out of the middle, and taste it. If it's not as crispy as you'd like, cook the fries for another 2-3 minutes at 400F. Repeat, until you have your dream basket of fries!

The final cooking time will depend on how thick your fries are and how many are in your basket. A less-full basket always cooks faster, because more air is moving around.

Common Air Fryer French Fries Mistakes

Got your unsoaked Russets cut to just the right size? Avoid these common pitfalls for the perfect results!

DO NOT overfill your basket.

Depending on the size of your air fryer, you can usually make between one and three Russet potatoes' worth of fries.

For the best fries, I try not to fill the basket more than ½ to ⅔ of the way, even when the fill line on the basket is higher than that.

This is the most critical thing to keep in mind when you're making air fryer french fries, y'all. A packed backed will give you some perfect, crispy fries, but the ones in the center will be alternately undercooked and mushy.

That's because when you overfill your air fryer's basket, you hinder the air flow, and that hot air whooshing through the fryer is the key to air fryer magic.

DO NOT forget to shake.

Shake at least once during the cooking cycle, preferably twice. Shaking helps ensure that all of your fries can a shot at being in the outer layer in the basket, which is how they'll get uniformly crispy.

DO NOT skimp on the liquid.

You can technically make air fryer french fries with no oil or other liquid, but I don't recommend it. I like to toss my cut potatoes together in a bowl with a little bit of salt, seasoning, and a tablespoon of oil before placing in the basket.

If you absolutely do not do oil, toss your potato pieces with soy sauce or a fat free salad dressing or with a tablespoon or two of aquafaba (a trick I learned from A Virtual Vegan).

That little bit of moisture will help you avoid dry fries. No one wants a dry fry!

Making Frozen French Fries in the Air Fryer

Got a bag of frozen fries that you'd like to use instead of cutting fresh potatoes? I've got you! The air fryer does an awesome job of cooking frozen fries to crispy perfection.

I get this question so often, in fact, that I created a video dedicated to the answer:

No time to watch a video? No problem! Just follow a few of basic dos and don'ts, and you're ready to go:

• DON'T overfill the basket. This rule applies to anything you make in the air fryer, including frozen french fries. If you overfill, you won't get evenly-cooked results.
• DO shake. Shake once for 1-3 servings. If you're filling the basket more, you should shake twice during cooking.
• DO cook at 400F for 10 minutes, but think of 10 minutes as a starting point. If your fries aren't done at 10 minutes, add 1-2 minutes of cooking time at 400F, and check again. In general, a fuller basket tends to need more cooking time.

You can use the seasoning ideas below on frozen fries just like you would fresh, so have fun with flavoring them!

You don't need oil to cook plain frozen fries, but a few spritzes of spray oil will help the seasonings stick, if you are using one of my spice blends below.

About My Air Fryer

Y'all, I am so excited to tell you about my new air fryer! It's the ZenChef PRO XXL Air Fryer from Zeny, who is sponsoring this recipe (and a few upcoming air fryer recipes, too!).

I've been experimenting with this air fryer for about a month now, and I am all in. the bask et is nice and large (5.8 quarts!), and I love the way it's designed.

As you probably know, I am extremely picky about air fryers, and this basket design is the kind I like: it pops out for easy cleaning, and it has holes at the bottom (rather than mesh) to allow air flow.

This is also the first air fryer I've tried that you can turn off before the cycle is done.

The ZenChef PRO XXL has a temperature control from 160F up to 400F, and you can set it for up to 60 minutes. Most of the air fryers I've tried only go up to 20 minutes, and that extra flexibility is handy for things like making baked potatoes.

So far, I've used it to make:

• more Gardein than I should admit to eating (400F, 10 minutes, you're welcome!)
• probably 1000 batches of air fryer french fries
• Air Fryer Tofu
• my Air Fryer Tofu and Potato Scramble

Everything has turned out great. The ZenChef PRO XXL cooks things quickly, evenly and consistently. And, of course, you can use little to no oil, if that's your thing.

The Air Fryer French Fries recipe below has options for using a tablespoon of oil or just a few spritzes of spray oil, if you're trying to really limit your oil consumption.