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Air Fryer Fried Chicken

Buttermilk-brined thighs in a craggy seasoned crust, crisp all over in 25 minutes without a pot of hot oil.

Prep
20 min
Cook
25 min
Rest
4 hr
Makes
Serves 4
Jump to the recipe
Crisp golden fried chicken pieces resting on paper
Photo: Terrance Barksdale / Pexels

An air fryer is a small convection oven, and that one fact explains everything that goes right and wrong with fried chicken in it. There is no oil to conduct heat into the crust, so the crust has to be built to brown on its own. Get that part right and the result is genuinely close to fried. Get it wrong and you have baked chicken wearing pale flour.

Three things do the work. The buttermilk brine, which seasons the meat and leaves a tacky surface for flour to grip. The drizzle of oil into the flour, which makes lumps — and lumps are what fry into the craggy bits everyone picks off first. And the spray of oil before cooking, which is not optional: dry flour in dry heat turns chalky and stays chalky.

Thighs, not breasts. Twenty-five minutes at 190°C is long enough to dry out a breast and exactly right for a thigh.

The one mistake worth naming: crowding the basket. Air fryers cook by moving hot air across a surface, and pieces touching each other have no surface for it to move across. Two batches with space beats one batch jammed in, every time.

Serve it with homemade barbecue sauce or, if you want the whole plate from this site, crispy air fryer potatoes alongside.

Fried chicken served in a basket with salad leaves
Photo: sharonang / Pixabay

Crispy air fryer chicken, printed

Buttermilk-brined thighs in a craggy seasoned crust, crisp all over in 25 minutes without a pot of hot oil.

What goes into the brine and the crust

For the brine

  • 2 lb (900 g) bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
  • 2 cups (480 ml) buttermilk
  • 2 tsp fine salt
  • 1 tsp hot sauce

For the coating

  • 1½ cups (190 g) all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp fine salt
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • ½ tsp cayenne
  • 2 tbsp neutral oil, plus oil spray

How to make fried chicken in an air fryer

  1. 1 Whisk the buttermilk, salt and hot sauce in a bowl. Add the thighs, turn to coat, cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and up to overnight.
  2. 2 Mix the flour with all the seasonings. Drizzle in the 2 tablespoons of oil and rub it through with your fingers until the flour is pebbly and clumping — those lumps become the crisp bits.
  3. 3 Lift each thigh straight from the buttermilk without wiping it and press it hard into the flour, turning twice. Set the coated pieces on a rack and leave them 10 minutes; the coating goes from powdery to slightly damp and stops falling off.
  4. 4 Heat the air fryer to 375°F (190°C). Spray the basket, arrange the thighs skin side down with space between them, and spray the tops generously until no dry flour is visible.
  5. 5 Cook 14 minutes. Turn, spray again, and cook 10–12 minutes more, until deep golden and 165°F (75°C) at the bone.
  6. 6 Rest 5 minutes on a rack, not a plate — a plate traps steam and softens the underside you just spent 25 minutes crisping.

Swaps and storage

  • No buttermilk: 480 ml milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice, left 10 minutes.
  • Boneless thighs work and take about 16 minutes total. Bone-in tastes better and is harder to overcook.
  • Leftovers reheat properly at 180°C for 5 minutes. A microwave undoes all of it.

Getting a crispy chicken crust right

Not enough oil spray. Anywhere still white and dry when it goes in will still be white and dry when it comes out — dry flour has nothing to fry in. Spray until the whole surface looks damp.

You can, and it will be noticeably drier and blander. If you are short of time, even 45 minutes in the buttermilk is worth more than none.

Only if you skip the 10-minute rest after coating, or turn the pieces before the first side has set. Give it the rest and turn once.