I made fried chicken in an air fryer

My air fryer fried chicken had good crunch and color.

“I made fried chicken in an air fryer” would be a nonsensical statement to any serious cook, who of course knows the device cooks through convection and heat rather than frying. But the target audience for an air fryer probably doesn’t care and probably isn’t going to use it for cooking food anyway but for reheating chicken tenders and French fries like our teen.

But since the device was taking up space in our kitchen, and I wanted to do a fried chicken experiment anyway, I decided to give it a try. I was actually testing two things—something I was taught in marketing you should never do because you don’t know which contributed to the result—air frying vs oven baking, and buttermilk vs pickle juice brine.

Pickle juice brine is the technique allegedly used at a popular fast food chicken restaurant. We’d tried this before, using the liquid from a jar of Vlasic dills, and were not impressed. But this time we had some very interesting juice from a tub of Grillo’s dills which include lemon juice and dill fronds and a whole bunch of spices.

Air fryer vs oven roasted fried chicken. The darker pieces are air fried, and better.

We used chicken thighs of uniform size and brined one batch in the pickle juice for about 6 hours and the other overnight in unseasoned buttermilk. (The shorter pickle brine was because we didn’t want them to get too tart.) Then we drained and dried both batches, added a beaten egg to the residual buttermilk, and mixed up some flour with the Colonel’s secret herbs and spices.

The chicken thighs were dipped in the buttermilk/egg mixture, then dredged in the flour and four of them were placed on a rack to bake in a 400 degree oven. The other two (that’s all that would fit) went into a 5 quart air fryer that had been preheated to 370 degrees. We set the timer for 40 minutes for each, and turned them halfway through.

The result? The air fryer fried chicken came out fine. It was crisp and crunchy and properly cooked without being dry. The oven chicken was okay when it cooled and the coating solidified a bit, but right out of the oven it was soft and messy. I guess this is why most oven fried chicken recipes include an extra layer of panko or cornflakes. The air fryer cleanup was quick and easy, while the sheet and rack from the oven needed soaking followed by plenty of elbow grease.

Would I do this again? Not likely. I’m not afraid of actual deep frying, which would have delivered crispy tender thighs in under 10 minutes and without a lot of grease if you regulate the temperature properly. But I liked the air fryer fried chicken more than I expected.

And as to the chicken brined in pickle juice, it was great! The flesh had a nice tang and I do believe the brine firmed it up a bit. Compared side by side, the non-juice meat was bland and less interesting though it tasted fine on its own. This will require further investigation.