Recipe of the Day - Cure Your Dinner Indecision
Oct 20, 2026 · 11 min · 8 segments
I have everything you need to know for how to cook chicken in your air fryer right here. From why you want to cook it in the air fryer to the tools and accessories that make your life easier to…
Christine PittmanHostSo first, why cook chicken in the air fryer? If I'm just doing like basic chicken, you know, I told you about poaching chicken the other day, but just need like some cooked chicken.
It ends up like firm, but juicy, kind of like roasted or baked chicken, but like more browning because that's the whole point of the air fryer, right? It has that small area with a convection oven that really circulates the hot air around the food and makes it nice and brown.
So that is great, especially if you are cooking some kind of chicken that has skin on it because that skin gets so crispy.
What's not amazing is if I'm doing a big batch of chicken in the air fryer to like use later on something and it comes out with all that crispy skin, all that munching on some of it, just like standing there beside my air fryer, you know? So it's a good thing and it's a bad thing.
You don't even have to preheat the air fryer before you get the chicken in there.
Like sometimes what I'll do is I'll set it to preheat and then I take the chicken out of the fridge, season it up, put some olive oil on it or whatever I'm doing.
So you don't have to wait like you do with your normal oven and it cooks it more quickly, about 30 to 40% quicker depending on what you're doing.
So you have no preheat time and quicker cooking time and better caramelization, more crispy skin.
It is pretty great, you know? So how do you cook chicken in the air fryer? I always set the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for cooking chicken.
I know a lot of people have it at different temperatures, but that's pretty much what I do, except for chicken wings, because they will actually start to get overly dark before they're cooked through.
So with chicken wings, I actually do them for the first little while at 360.
And then it's just five to six minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit just to crisp them up.
I often use just a mister or cooking spray or a drizzle of olive oil and rub it all over.
You can put the chicken into a bowl, add in some oil and add in your seasonings and toss it all around.
So first, why cook chicken in the air fryer? If I'm just doing like basic chicken, you know, I told you about poaching chicken the other day, but just need like some cooked chicken.
It ends up like firm, but juicy, kind of like roasted or baked chicken, but like more browning because that's the whole point of the air fryer, right? It has that small area with a convection oven that really circulates the hot air around the food and makes it nice and brown.
So that is great, especially if you are cooking some kind of chicken that has skin on it because that skin gets so crispy.
What's not amazing is if I'm doing a big batch of chicken in the air fryer to like use later on something and it comes out with all that crispy skin, all that munching on some of it, just like standing there beside my air fryer, you know? So it's a good thing and it's a bad thing.
You don't even have to preheat the air fryer before you get the chicken in there.
Like sometimes what I'll do is I'll set it to preheat and then I take the chicken out of the fridge, season it up, put some olive oil on it or whatever I'm doing.
So you don't have to wait like you do with your normal oven and it cooks it more quickly, about 30 to 40% quicker depending on what you're doing.
So you have no preheat time and quicker cooking time and better caramelization, more crispy skin.
It is pretty great, you know? So how do you cook chicken in the air fryer? I always set the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for cooking chicken.
I know a lot of people have it at different temperatures, but that's pretty much what I do, except for chicken wings, because they will actually start to get overly dark before they're cooked through.
So with chicken wings, I actually do them for the first little while at 360.
And then it's just five to six minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit just to crisp them up.
I often use just a mister or cooking spray or a drizzle of olive oil and rub it all over.
You can put the chicken into a bowl, add in some oil and add in your seasonings and toss it all around.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
