Hey Hive!
We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some new recipes I've been trying at home since I've been cooking a lot nowadays! Both because it's cheaper and also healthier to cook for yourself compared to eating out. While I have some regular recipes I do like to try new things and figured I'd share the new ones I've tried.
I had some frozen chicken breasts in the freezer so I thought I'd try this air fryer fried chicken recipe that looked very good and simple especially since it's made in the air fryer.
Here are the instructions:
Here's the link if you want to check out the video:
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DLks85buMnJ/
I didn't have any chicken thighs only chicken breasts so I wanted to see how this recipe would work with chicken breasts.
Here are the ingredients I used:
- 1 frozen chicken breast, cut into 1-inch chunks
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Sauce
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp vinegar (rice vinegar preferred)
- 2 tbsp honey
- chopped garlic
Step 1: Defrost the frozen chicken breasts.
Step 2: Pat the chicken dry and cut into bite-sized pieces.
Step 3: Coat the chicken pieces in cornstarch, paprika and cayenne pepper mixture.
Step 4: Spray with oil and place them into the air fryer and cook for 18 minutes at 200°C.
I didn't have an oil spray and it would be hard to take it out of the basket so I placed them on aluminium foil instead. I think this was a mistake, or I should've added oil to the aluminium foil as well.
Step 5: Combine the soy sauce, vinegar, honey and garlic in a bowl. The recipe called for cooking it in a small pot to reduce the mixture but I was making soup and I only had 1 stovetop.
Step 6: Take the chicken out of the fryer.
Honestly it looked and smelled good, but the chicken juices made it stuck to the foil so it was really hard to get the pieces separated.
Once we did manage to pry the chicken off the foil it was way too dry. I think it's the combination of it being a chicken breast (especially a frozen one) and air frying that dried out the chicken.
Thankfully I only used 1 chicken breast to make this since I wasn't sure if it was going to be good. I used the other chicken breast I defrosted to make some chicken soup with carrots, potatoes and onions.
After the vegetables were softened I added in the chicken pieces and some chicken stock for flavour.
The soup turned out great, thankfully since the chicken was so dry. It was definitely the winner here.
I tried the air fried chicken with the sauce and honestly the sauce was good, but the chicken was just too dry to be saved, unfortunately.
I think maybe this would've been better with chicken thighs for sure. But I'm not sure if I'll try air frying chicken anymore since I don't want to waste any more meat. Since this experiment I've been really hesitant to try air frying raw meat and I definitely prefer pan frying.
It was still a good experiment but I doubt I'll be making this recipe again. Maybe just with pan fried chicken thighs. Have you tried any air fryer chicken recipes?
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
