How Do You Clean Your Commercial Air Fryer?

Commercial air fryers for restaurants are becoming more and more popular. With their widespread use comes the need to keep them clean. If you find yourself here, you’re probably already the owner of one of our commercial air fryers, or a similar unit.

Our customers often ask us how to clean the air fryer they’ve purchased from us, and because our most popular commercial air fryer convection oven brand is Quik n' Crispy, we’re going to base this guide on one of Quik n' Crispy’s own recommended cleaning procedures, found within their operator’s manual for the Quik n' Crispy products.

You’ll find that the recommended cleaning steps and best practices found herein are similar to those used for other commercial air fryers, including different Quik n' Crispy models. Still, we always recommend checking the owner’s manual for your specific commercial air fryer brand and model.

Quik n' Crispy Air Fryer Quick Cleaning

Whether you’re looking to clean a commercial air fryer for your food truck or your large restaurant kitchen, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

That is to say, you can perform quick “cleanings” after each time you use your air fryer. In fact, doing so is recommended by Quik n' Crispy to keep your commercial air fryer cleaner and safer for regular operation. Here’s what to do:

1. Turn off your unit or unplug it.
   
2. Pull out the drip tray or cooking basket.
3. Brush the top of the drip tray or cooking basket with a brass bristle brush to remove any baked-on sauce, food deposits, and loosen any crumbs. Pull out the tray and basket and Repeat with the bottom side.
4. With the basket pulled out and the drip tray and basket separated, scrape the drip tray with a sharp metal dough cutter, bench scraper, or another similar tool. This will loosen anything that’s really baked on or sticky and move any oil drippings to one side of the tray.
5. Wipe off any crumbs, residue, or oil that you’ve scraped to one side with a clean paper towel or rag and discard.

Not only does the above procedure keep food from collecting and getting baked into your air fryer or causing fire hazards when done regularly, but it also prevents foods with different flavors or ingredients from cross-contaminating each other, resulting in a better-tasting and higher-quality product for your customers. 

Quik n' Crispy Air Fryer Deep Cleaning

The biggest commercial air fryers have food coming in and out all day long, sometimes seven days a week. So these units must be cleaned thoroughly – and often. The best way to do this is to perform a deep cleaning.

While you can perform the above procedure for quick cleaning in most commercial air fryers, you should check your owner’s manual to see if the cleaning procedure for your model as recommended by the manufacturer differs from this deep cleaning procedure. That said, here’s how Quik n' Crispy recommends cleaning one of its best commercial air fryers, the Quik n' Crispy 900007, GF5 Ventless Greaseless Air Fryer, 208v:

1. Turn off your unit or unplug it.
   
2. Remove the cooking basket assembly from your commercial air fryer by sliding it out.
3. Remove the drip tray from the unit. To do this, first push it forward all the way. Then, lift the rear of the tray up and slide it forward to the front.
4. Put on oven mitts.
5. Next, you’ll remove the removable front panel, which can be found right above the cooking basket. To do this, you’ll need to apply slight upward pressure.
6. Now, remove the air plenum from the cooking chamber. The air plenum is composed of two sides, a top piece, and two tray guides, all found within the oven interior. We recommend checking page 23 of the Quik n’ Crispy F55 Owners Manual for images of what this component looks like if confused at this step.
7. Locate the rear splash guard and slide that out of the interior of the fryer.
8. Next, it’s time to disassemble the air plenum into its three component pieces. But before you do, take note that the flanges on the front and sides of the plenum are taller than the flanges on the rear. (We recommend taking a picture for reference so you know how to properly reassemble).
9. Now, you’re ready to disassemble the plenum. To complete this step, place the plenum on a hard flat surface such as a countertop and lift the top center piece about a 1/2”. Then, fold the sides inward until you can unattach them. This should leave you with three separate pieces.
10. Once you’ve taken out all removable components from your air fryer and disassembled the plenum, it’s time to clean! You have two options. A) You can obtain Quick n’ Crispy Dip Tank Cleaner and soak overnight. Or, if you don’t have that on hand, you can use any commercial degreaser/dishwasher detergent to pre-soak and then scrub all components you’ve removed from your air fryer (basket, tray, splashguard, and three plenum pieces) according to local health department guidelines.
11. Generally, to get a commercial air fryer fully clean while scrubbing, you should use a wire brush for the cooking basket and a green scrubbing pad for all other components. You will likely have to wash, rinse, completely sanitize, and then air dry all fryer components per health guidelines.

Commercial Air Fryer Cleaning FAQs

How Do You Get Baked-On Grease Out of an Air Fryer?

First off, if you regularly follow our quick cleaning commercial air fryer procedure, you’ll get less baked-on grease accumulation over time. If, however, you do wind up with grease accumulation, then soaking per our deep cleaning procedure as recommended above should do the trick.

How Do You Degrease the Inside of an Air Fryer?

In order to properly and fully degrease the inside of a commercial air fryer like the many Quik n’ Crispy units we sell here at GoFoodservice, you’ll need to first remove all components. Soaking with a dedicated degreaser is the best course of action.

What Is a Good Degreaser for an Air Fryer?

We sell many fantastic descalers and degreasers. You should always check your product owner’s manual for any warnings about materials that can or cannot be used. For the safest, non-caustic option, using a strong all-purpose cleaner is a good course of action.

How Do You Get Grease Out of an Air Fryer Tray?

You can remove some grease regularly with quick cleaning by scraping the tray (see our Quick cleaning instructions above). To remove all grease, a soak will likely be needed.

Final Thoughts

We hope you’ve found the above information on cleaning a Quik n’ Crispy commercial air fryer helpful.

While the specific steps detailed in this piece pertain specifically to the Quik n’ Crispy GF5, the recommended practices (scraping for quick cleaning, soaking with all-purpose cleaner or degreaser, and sanitizing) are best practices that should apply to pretty much all commercial air fryers.

Looking for information on how to clean your restaurant’s deep fryers? Check out our commercial fryer step-by-step cleaning guide.

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