After cooking quite a few air fryer recipes recently, now has been a perfect time to give a few cleaning hacks a go. I’ve previously tested out baking soda, denture tablets, and dishwasher tablets to clean my air fryer and have found great success with all of them.
Stumbling across a more peculiar air fryer cleaning hack, I found some cleaning enthusiasts using old tea bags to clean their kitchen appliance. Cleaning grease can be a long and difficult chore, so I had major doubts over the legitimacy of this cleaning hack. However, after popping a used tea bag into my dirty air fryer basket with some hot water, the grease disappeared before my eyes.
My air fryer had been used several times before trying out this tea bag hack, so it had baked-on grease stuck on it, but it wasn’t in an extremely bad state.
To clean my air fryer, I started by popping a tea bag I had just used to make a lovely cuppa into the dirty basket and filling it with boiling water.
I left the tea bag to sit in the boiling water for just five minutes, during which I occasionally lightly rubbed the tea bag over the inside of the basket.
Make sure not to put too much force on the tea bag, or it will split, and you’ll make more of a mess than the grease.
Tea, in all its forms, has been used domestically for years to help complete a range of household tasks.
The tea bag cleaning hack can work due to the tannins found in tea. Tannins have natural degreasing properties, which can help break down grease, making it easier to remove.
Now, as I learned for myself, a tea bag can work wonders at making grease disappear.
After five minutes, I removed the tea bag and water, and the majority of the grease had lifted without even rinsing.
For the final step, I just ran a soapy sponge over the basket and rack before rinsing. The remainder of the grease wiped off with ease.
I was pleased to find that this hack worked, cutting through the grease in my air fryer. However, I am curious to see how it would fare if the air fryer basket were even dirtier.
