Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

The Best Deep Fryers for Enjoying Your Favorite Fried Foods at Home

best deep fryer on amazon

Dieticians and health nuts can guilt-trip us all they want, but let’s face it: Americans aren’t giving up fried food any time soon. There’s just something so addictive about the taste of flaky Korean fried chicken or a handful of crisp French fries. Thankfully, preparing and enjoying your favorite fried food in your own kitchen isn’t as steep of a challenge as some might think. Cue the home deep fryer: These handy appliances are basically smaller, self-contained versions of the large standing deep fryers you’ll find in restaurants and fast-food joints, but simply scaled down to about the size of a food processor.

A deep fryer is a pretty straightforward device made to heat up a large quantity of oil in which you will immerse your ingredients. However, there are really only a few big considerations when shopping for one: safety, oil/food capacity, ease of use, and frying quality. There is a surprising number of these cookers on the market, but we’ve picked through the herd to bring you the best deep fryers available on Amazon that will have you whipping up some home-fried goodness.

Related Videos

Related Guides

Best Overall: T-Fal EZ Clean Deep Fryer

best deep fryer on amazon

If you want a solid, well-built, nicely sized home deep fryer that’s simple to use while still offering some handy modern features, then the T-Fal is a tough act to beat. This electric deep fryer features a 3.5-liter oil capacity and room enough for more than 2.5 lbs of food, which is a great all-around size for most homes. The aptly named EZ Clean deep fryer also has a neat filtration system that cleans your used oil, greatly reducing waste.

The EZ Clean’s immersed 1,700-watt heating element is kept safely away from your hands, while a sturdy steel lid keeps hot oil splatters off of the counter (and, more importantly, off of your hands). The basket, lid, and oil containers are all dishwasher safe for simple clean-up as well.

Also Great: Hamilton Beach Triple-Basket Deep Fryer

best deep fryer on amazon

Hamilton Beach has been many peoples’ go-to brand for budget-friendly kitchen appliances for decades, and its triple-basket deep fryer is a well-made and well-priced alternative to the T-Fal EZ Clean. It’s also a bit larger, with a 4.5-liter oil capacity, and it comes with three baskets instead of just one: A large single-compartment basket for frying bigger items, plus two side-by-side baskets for cooking up smaller finger foods like nuggets and fries.

If you want something a bit more compact (and even cheaper still), then Hamilton Beach also makes a two-liter deep fryer that would be great in places where counter space is limited.

Best Value: Presto GranPappy Deep Fryer

best deep fryer on amazon

The Presto GranPappy is, in a word, an old-school fry pot that you simply plug into an outlet instead of placing on a burner. Don’t expect to find any advanced temperature settings or safety features here: You simply fill this bucket-style deep fryer up with oil (it holds six cups or 1.5 quarts), fire it up, wait 15 minutes or so, add your ingredients, and scoop out the crispy fried results with the included spoon – no frying basket included or required.

The Presto GranPappy is simple and it works, and its snap-on lid means you can re-use the cooking oil until you feel it’s time to dump it and pour in some new oil. There’s also the Presto FryDaddy, although we found that to be almost too diminutive for most uses (but it’s another cheap option if you really want something smaller).

Best Large Deep Fryer: MasterBuilt Butterball

best deep fryer on amazon

When you hear “fried food,” you might immediately think “chicken,” and while most of our picks are fine for frying up separate wings, legs, and thighs, you’ll need something a bit larger for handling a whole bird. If the turkey is on the menu (or if you’re just frying up lots of food for parties or a large family), then the MasterBuilt Butterball has you covered: Its extra-large basket can deep fry an entire turkey (or chicken) weighing up to 20 pounds and easily tackles as much as five pounds’ worth of wings.

The Butterball deep fryer can be filled with water for boiling things, and you even can clip the fryer basket above the water line for steaming veggies. There’s also a handy oil drain valve for emptying the thing out when you’re finished so you can avoid making messes by having to dump it.

Best Stovetop Deep Fryer: Bayou Classic Aluminum Fry Pot

best deep fryer on amazon

When it comes to home deep frying, it doesn’t get much more traditional (or much simpler) than a metal fry pot. The name “Bayou Classic” invokes images of shrimp gumbo and other Cajun foods, and you can certainly fry up some southern fried chicken, seafood, and pretty much anything else in this deep fryer which can be used right on your stovetop or over a similar heat source.

The Bayou Classic stovetop deep fryer utilizes a perforated food basket which is immersed into the 14-quart aluminum pot (note you’ll only be filling it up about a third of the way) which is filled with cooking oil before placed on a burner. The cool-touch handle lets you quickly and safely remove the basket once your food is done.

Editors' Recommendations

Need to reduce your daily sugar intake? Eliminate these 10 surprising foods
Sugar is sneaky, hiding itself in many surprising places (like these foods)
bacon peregrino Ibrico de bellota

It's no surprise that we as a society are eating far too much sugar. On average, American adults consume around 77 grams of sugar per day. That's more than three times the recommended amount by the USDA.
Sure, it's easy to point our fingers at the conveniently located candy bars in the checkout lane, or the super-sized sodas everywhere you turn. Easy-to-munchsugary snacks like cookies are far too easy to take advantage of. And those pretty little pastries with our morning coffee are obvious culprits, too.
What might not be so obvious, though, are the sneaky ways sugar makes itself at home in such a vast amount of the food we consume. Ice cream and candy, sure. But milk? Marinara sauce? What about those "healthy" foods with labels that read low-fat or low-sodium? We'll let you in on a little secret - if they're cutting one ingredient, they're probably making up for it with sugar.
Sugar is sneaky, creeping into surprising foods and then disguising itself with an exotic name tag on the nutrition label. Common aliases include: cane crystals, corn sweetener, corn syrup, crystalline, evaporated cane juice, fructose, fruit juice concentrates, and syrup, to name only a few!
So if you're trying to watch your sugar intake, the smartest thing you can do is read the label of everything you're bringing home from the grocery store, because that sugar will creep up out of nowhere if you aren't careful. To help you be better prepared, though, here is a list of foods sugar loves to hide in.

Yogurt

Read more
How to make your own cold brew coffee at home (no, it isn’t just iced coffee)
Cold brew coffee: Making this popular drink is easier than you think it is
international coffee drinks that arent dalgona cold brew ice

I grew up in a house where iced coffee was made by pouring the hours-old coffee pot leftovers over a glass of ice. Maybe a little milk was added, or, if you were feeling extra fancy, a splash of flavored creamer. Embarrassingly far into adulthood (before Keurig came along and cramped my style), that's how I made my "cold brew." For years, this was how I drank my warm-weather coffee. But oh, did I have it wrong.
In case you're unaware, cold brew, real cold brew, is made using an entirely different method than hot coffee. While hot coffee is generally made by running hot water through finely-ground coffee beans, cold brew is made more like our grandmothers made sun tea - set to steep for a while, becoming flavorful and delicious on its own with nothing added but love, water, and time.
The result is a much smoother, silkier, bolder and more flavorful cup of morning magic. When coffee is steeped this way, much of the bitterness smooths to be much gentler on the palette, allowing you to really taste the flavor of the beans in a whole new way. So how do you make cold brew at home?
There are plenty of gizmos out there, like cold brew coffee makers, jugs, and infusers, but there's no need for these. Like many needless kitchen tools, these accessories end up being shoved into the back of the pantry, never to be seen again. Our favorite method of making cold brew coffee involves nothing more than a good old-fashioned French press.

How to make cold brew coffee

Read more
The best ginger ale brands to sip on or mix with
Looking for the best ginger ale? Our top picks
best ginger ale brands organic soda

Bartenders understand the value of a good ginger ale. It can be combined with spirits for some memorable cocktails like a Dark 'n Stormy or Scotch and Ginger Highball. It can also serve as the base for some great zero-proof mocktails if you're in the midst of dry January or just taking it easy. The best ginger ales are great on their own, offering a swift kick of herbaceous spice that awakens the palate.

Related Reading

Read more