Need an easy, kid-friendly, whole family pleasing dinner recipe? This Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken recipe is it!
Finding an easy dinner recipe that the whole family loves can be a challenge, am I right?
Between me, my husband, and my two teenagers, our tastes can be all over the place. There are some recipes that some of us love and others tolerate/like, recipes that some of us like but others do not at all, and there are a few rare unicorn recipes that we all love and agree to make over and over again.
This Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken recipe is one of those rare unicorn recipes.
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- 🔥 What is an air fryer?
- 🍗 Air fryer popcorn chicken
- Delicious dinner or appetizer
- 🍽 Serving ideas
- Best Multi-Cooker Appliance
- Best Instant Pot
- Best Blender
- Best Stand Mixer
- Daterra Cucina Cookware
- Best Air Fryer: Tray Style
- Best Air Fryer: Basket Style
- Best Large Capacity Air Fryer Basket
- Best Crockpot
- Another Great Slow Cooker
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- 🥘 More easy dinner recipes
- More chicken recipes
- Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken
🔥 What is an air fryer?
Before we dive into the recipe, let’s talk about the almighty Air Fryer for a moment.
Do you have one? Have you considered getting one? I have the GoWISE USA 5.8 Quart Programmable 8-in-1 Air Fryer XL in Red. It’s a beast and definitely takes up a lot of space on the countertop (I made room to store mine below) but it’s worth it in order to make larger batches of food at a time.
In essence, an air fryer is a large egg-like appliance that sits on your countertop (away from other heat sources and plastics!). You use it for cooking food you would normally cook in a traditional deep fryer or convection oven. However, instead of frying food in large quantities of oil as you would in a deep fryer, the air fryer essentially acts as a countertop convection oven and circulates hot air quickly around all sides of the food. This helps make food crispy like a deep fryer would – but with much less oil.
In theory, the air fryer helps you create healthier versions of the deep fried foods you love. It still uses oil, and you still control the breading, but it’s definitely healthier than deep frying!
🍗 Air fryer popcorn chicken
I’ve used our air fryer for a few different recipes now. It’s great for fries, but terrible for lumpia; some recipes are better using traditional cooking methods.
This Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken recipe is the best one so far and I’m excited to share it with all of you!
Delicious dinner or appetizer
I was skeptical of using the air fryer for chicken at first, but it’s fantastic. The chicken is cut up into small cubes, marinated for at least a couple of hours, then breaded, dunked in the marinade again, and breaded a second time.
NOTE: you can totally skip the second marinade dunk and breading step if you want to use less breading. Just know that your chicken will not look as crispy as the one I made here. Because more breading = crispier crunchier chicken.
You can actually halve the ingredients if you just want to make enough for 4-6 people for dinner.
This recipe makes enough to serve 4-6 people for one dinner, and then enough to freeze for the future. I love the Make Once, Eat Twice way of cooking with my family since my kids can take them out of the freezer and pop them in the oven or microwave to warm up for after-school snacks.
It’s also a great recipe to make if you are feeding a large crowd. It’s an awesome Game Day Recipe – just serve with options of dipping sauces like BBQ sauce, ranch, and honey mustard.
🍽 Serving ideas
- Serve it on top of a green salad, with honey mustard or ranch dressing.
- Use it as sandwich/sub filling to create a crispy chicken sandwich or sub, with lettuce, tomato, and mayo.
- Serve it kabob-style with alternating pieces of chicken, mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes and a basil leaf to create Caprese Chicken Kabobs
- Three words (and an ampersand): Chicken & Waffles, baby!
These are my tried and true kitchen essentials. These are the best kitchen tools and appliances I personally cook and bake with in my own home! From my favorite cooking tools to baking tools, the best small appliances for home cooks, and more, this kitchen essentials checklist will help you master most recipes in your home kitchen!
Best Multi-Cooker Appliance
I love my Ninja Foodi! I have the Foodi 8-Quart 9-in-1 Deluxe XL Pressure Cooker (model FD401). In addition to pressure cooking, it can air fry, broil, dehydrate, slow cook, sear/saute, and more. And I can often cook two items - a side and a main dish - at the SAME time in the Foodi!
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Best Instant Pot
I have and use this 8-quart Instant Pot Duo a few times a week. Be sure to check out my Instant Pot Recipes!
Best Blender
This Vitamix is one of the more affordable Vitamix blenders, and it gets the job done! I use this blender almost every day, for smoothies, soups, sauces, and so much more!
Best Stand Mixer
This 5-quart KitchenAid Stand Mixer is a workhorse in my kitchen! I use it almost every day for everything from cookies to pizza dough to icing. I use mine so much, I have two: one in a limited edition Ocean Drive color, and one in white.
Daterra Cucina Cookware
Daterra Cucina is a Portland, Oregon-based family business that makes my favorite everyday cooking pans! They are professional grade, ceramic, non-stick, non-toxic pans that cook food BEAUTIFULLY and are super easy to clean. I love them and know you will, too!
Best Air Fryer: Tray Style
This is my newest air fryer, purchased in 2019. I love my basket style air fryer, but also needed to do recipe testing with a rack/tray style air fryer since so many of you now use this style. The InstantPot Vortex Plus is a 7-in-1 workhorse that serves as an Air Fryer, Toaster Oven, and Rotisserie Oven, which allows it to Air Fry, Rotisserie, Roast, Broil, Bake, Reheat, and Dehydrate. The 10-quart capacity means you can air fry A LOT OF FOOD in one batch! Versus making several batches in the 5-6 Quart basket style air fryers.
Best Air Fryer: Basket Style
During our kitchen remodel, I learned how to create delicious dishes using our GoWise Air Fryer, and I love it! This 5.8 Quart, 8-in-1, XL Air Fryer is perfect size for families with 3+ people.
Best Large Capacity Air Fryer Basket
This Instant Pot Vortex 4-in-1 Air Fryer is a 6 Quart, basket air fryer with 4 One-Touch Programs, Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Reheat. The basket can accommodate a 2-pound bag of fries and a 4-pound chicken.
Best Crockpot
This is my newest slow cooker - the CrockPot MyTime Slow Cooker. I LOVE it!! It's a 6-quart programmable slow cooker with an easy-to-clean ceramic pot.
Another Great Slow Cooker
I've had this Ninja 3-in-1 Cooking System for 10 years, and it's amazing! I love using it mainly as a slow cooker. I also love to use it to keep food warm for parties. Cleans up easily too!
Best Ice Cream Maker
I have the older version of this 2-quart Cuisinart ice cream maker and it is still going strong after 10+ years! It's so easy to use and comes with a great little instruction booklet that's easy to follow.
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More chicken recipes
Did you make this recipe? Don’t forget to leave a 5-Star 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 rating in the recipe card, and if you really loved it, please leave a comment further down on the page. Thank you!
Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken
Equipment
Ingredients
Marinade
- 2 pounds chicken breast tenders, cut into small pieces
- 2 cups almond milk
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon ground paprika
Dry Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
- 2 teaspoons ground paprika
- oil spray
Instructions
- In a large ziplock bag, add the chicken and all of the marinade ingredients. Marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, up to 6 hours.
- In a large shallow bowl, add all of the dry ingredients.
- After marinating, place chicken and marinade into a large bowl. Working in small batches, dredge chicken chunks into dry ingredients, shake off excess flour, dunk again briefly into the marinade, then dredge for a second time in the dry ingredients, fully coating each piece of chicken. Be sure to gently shake off excess flour mixture.
- Spray olive oil onto the bottom and sides of the inside of the air fryer vessel. Place breaded chicken in an even layer; set aside the rest of the chicken. Give the tops of the chicken in the air fryer vessel a quick spray with olive oil, then place into the air fryer.
- Air fry at 375°F for 10 minutes. Halfway through this cooking time (at 5 minutes), open the air fryer and shake the basket. If using a tray-style air fryer, use tongs to turn chicken pieces over. Spray tops of chicken with cooking spray, then resume air frying for the remaining 5 minutes. NOTE: depending on the size and amount of chicken, as well as your particular air fryer, you may need to allow yours to cook in the air fryer for anywhere from 2-4 minutes more.
- Remove from the air fryer, and repeat steps until you're finished with all of the chicken (usually 3 to 4 batches for me; it may be more or less for you, depending on your air fryer and also how you cut your chicken pieces).
- Serve immediately with your favorite dipping sauces. Place any extra chicken into freezer-safe plastic bags and freeze for up to 3 months.
Notes
- Chop the chicken into similar sized-pieces so that they cook up evenly.
- Do not crowd the air fryer basket or tray. Trying to cook too many pieces at once will increase air frying time.
- Remember that every air fryer is different. Watch your first batch to see if you need to adjust the temperature and/or timing for the following batches.
- It is very important to make sure you shake off excess flour before cooking in the air fryer, and that you add an even layer of spray oil to the tops of the chicken.
- If your flour isn’t crisping up at the end of 10 minutes, this usually means:
- you have too much flour left sticking to your chicken and needed to shake the excess off more,
- you’ve crowded too many pieces into the space and they’re not able to cook properly, and/or…
- you need to add a little more oil spray to the tops.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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This post was first published on October 1, 2018. It was updated February 2, 2020 with new content.
Do you think you can freeze before cooking and cook them for a party the same day instead ?
Hi Cristina! I haven’t done that, but suspect based on other recipes I’ve done that you could prep the chicken entirely up to the cooking part, freeze, then thaw and air fry when ready. I would suggest watching the popcorn chicken carefully while it cooks, as you will likely need to adjust the air fryer cooking time since it has been frozen. If you do this, please let us know how it went !
These were really tasty but created quite a mess while air frying. We have a tray style and the breading got stuck all over the tray and made them very difficult to turn. Was also a huge mess to clean so made cooking in batches difficult. That said I thought they were very yummy. Unfortunately my kids wouldn’t try them but that’s typical for little kids!
Update: my kids tried them the next day and LOVED them and kept asking for more. So on the end they are worth the mess but I’ll have to save for when I have time to do them! And I’ll double the batch to freeze a bunch!
If using the tray, do you have to spray the tray before you put the pieces on it? It was a huge mess for me too. We have a tray style air fryer. I reengineered the process a bit, but it is still very messy with LOTs of clean up. Making enough to freeze makes it worth it. My son loves it and he’s a very picky eater.
Can you use buttermilk instead of almond milk?
Hi Paige! Yes, you can use buttermilk! :)
This recipe was good! I made a homemade sauce that was perfect for this meal!
So glad you liked it, Catherine!
Hi! I want to try this recipe. But, I am a little confused about the marinating step when flouring. Do you make another batch? Or use the same as what you marinated the chicken in? Thanks!
Hi Azlynn! You use the same marinade.
The popcorn chicken, I can say is super addicting! Dredging the chicken bits in finely-crushed cornflakes add a nice crunch, plus they brown better in the air fryer than if you were to use flour.
my first time using an air fryer. It turned out pretty good!
Do you think this would work if you coated them in hot wing sauce after air frying them??
You can certainly coat them with your fave sauce after air frying!
Looks great! Do you think you can use other kinds of flour…whole wheat, gluten free, or nut flours?
I have only used all-purpose flour so I can’t attest to how other flours will work with it. That said, you should be able to sub out for other flours — just know the taste and texture will vary.
I used wheat flour and they turned out great!
I’m not sure what I did wrong. I had cooked chicken covered in raw, uncooked flour. The only breading that cooked was where the air fryer touched the food.
Sorry to hear that, Megan. Did you work in batches, as mentioned in the recipe, so that you had one single layer of chicken each time? When you work in batches and cook a single layer at a time, all of the chicken should be touching the air fryer and therefore all of the breading should cook. The other suggestion I would make is to maybe either add a little more oil to the bottom of the air fryer and/or to the tops of the chicken before cooking. Or, try less flour.
recipe says 1/2 ground paprika. 1/2 what? TBSP? tsp?
I am trying with cow milk since no one in my family drinks almond milk and i don’t want to get it to throw rest away after.
This time i am gonna use 1/2 tsp of paprika if that works..
Hi Nancy! Sorry about that – I’ll fix that now. We use 1/2 tablespoon, but we love paprika for a little added flavor on our chicken. You can use less if you would prefer. Thanks!
I used wheat flour and they were AMAZING! my hubby even said he was impressed! 😜
Does it have to be almond milk? I am allergic.
Hi Sarah! You can use regular milk instead of almond milk. That’s just what my family uses :) Thanks!
Just made these tonight and they’re awesome! Only problem is my breading kind of falls off when I take a bite. Any suggestions to make it stick better?
Hi Amanda, thanks for making these and so glad you liked them! You could try breading the chicken and then sticking it in the refrigerator for a while, even for just 15 minutes but up to a couple of hours. That can help the breading set in and stick more, if you’re finding it falls off. You can also try to spray a little more olive oil in the air fryer pan. Hope that helps!