The PERFECT Air Fryer Chicken Tender (Ranking 6 Methods)

yep wow so we are back exploring more culinary magic with my good friend the air fryer we've done the chicken wing we've done the french fry we've crowned winners for both but today we are exploring another staple of fried goodness the chicken tender one of my favorites so today we're gonna be setting up a controlled experiment with proper variables a bunch of different trials possibly some tribulations all with the goal of crowning the perfect air fryer chicken tender so before we get into the trials we've got to go over some ground rules because if we're going to crown the perfect chicken tender we need consistency we need those controlled variables throughout the entire experiment so the first variable is the seasoning in the sauce what i'm gonna do for every single chicken tender is leave everything completely unseasoned and i'll only be seasoning it with salt at the very end when it comes out of the air fryer just to keep things consistent and easy now for the sauce there's obviously so many delicious things you can dip a chicken tender in but for me the king of all chicken dinner sauces is the honey mustard more specifically the creamy honey mustard which couldn't be easier to make you've got three ingredients honey mustard and mayo you add them to a bowl in equal parts mix them together and boom there you go i don't know which fast food chain was the original one to carry this but my brother was always just preaching the word around the house of the creamy honey mustard and it just became the ultimate sauce in our household so thank you josh the next controlled variable is the actual chicken we're using now traditionally for a chicken tender i would say 90 of the time you're gonna see white meat chicken breasts but there's no reason you can't use dark meat for me at home i generally just use whatever i have just remember to take the cooking times into account of course with dark meat it's gonna dry out a little slower than white meat and take a little longer to cook so for me i had some chicken thighs with the bone in and the skin on so i just did a quick little butcher job on that to make them skinless and boneless and then when it comes to slicing these up there's a really easy way to do it you locate the actual chicken tender on the breast which is this little piece right here and it should peel away pretty naturally from just a quick tug and then once you have the actual chicken tender just sort of copy that size with the other cuts and what i like to do is just kind of move the chicken around to get the proper cuts so those pieces are nice and even and they're all cooking at the same time which is the most important for the chicken thigh i just kind of cut naturally around the seams and if you're using the seams you're generally going to get more of a chicken nugget but it's all right that it's a little smaller because again they cook just a little bit longer than the white meat so let's talk about batters and breadings now generally wet batters are just not a good idea in the air fryer i've tried them before they don't work but for the sake of this experiment i'm gonna make a quick chicken wet batter with a little bit of cornstarch a little bit of flour and some baking soda and some ice cold water whisk that up until you get a thick batter i'm gonna dip one dark meat and one white meat in there coat them with oil and air frying for a few minutes let's see what we got here interesting it's been seven minutes so they're cooked hit these with a little salt a lot of the batter has fallen through some has kind of just ripped off yeah as i it's hot damn it i need a fork as i try to pick it up too the batter is slipping off which is not a good sign really tender so cooking times right kind of weird slightly crispy shell but a lot of the shell has already fallen off didn't really get brown just not optimal ultimately when you're doing a wet batter you need the vacuum that instantaneous seal from a bunch of oil deep frying for the next test i wanted to just go a step above so what i have right here are some chicken pieces marinated in buttermilk and i'm just going to coat those in flour so it's not completely wet but it's not breaded per se and i'll do the same exact thing throw them in the airfryer coat them with a little bit of oil and air fry them for a few minutes all right we are just about done okay so we've got oh the bottom is no good bottom's terrible i'm gonna give it another minute here we go definitely an improvement i mean that's terrible the batter is just crumbling off this is really just a test of which one is better at this point oh i've got no batter now surprisingly i actually think the wet batter is better than this one but they both suck so clearly when we aren't deep frying when we don't have all that oil and you're using an air fryer you can't rely on moisture that has been proven unless one of you has figured out something please comment below but it hasn't worked for me in all of my trials using this air fryer now what i have found works fantastic is your classic three-part breading where you start with flour to get your chicken coated that flour then makes the egg stick which then holds on all of this breading and now that breading is glued onto your chicken tender with a nice coating of oil you're gonna get a nice crispy cohesive crust on your chicken tender so the last control variable is time and temperature i'll be using my go-to air fryer the kosori that you've seen me use in every single past airfryer video this is the kosori dual blaze 6.8 quart smart air fryer and this thing is great because it's got the 6.8 core capacity which can fit a nice meal in there without overwhelming the basket and compromising on crispiness and since we have dual heating elements on both the top and bottom you don't actually have to shake the basket throughout the cooking process like most airfryers and this airfryer has 12 customizable cooking functions including chicken which is set for 390 degrees and that temperature works great for a chicken wing but i have found when you're breading something to just lower the temperature down to 380 to really protect that breading from burning and with chicken tenders at this size cooked at 380 degrees fahrenheit six to eight minutes with no preheating just straight into the air fryer it's perfect to get a nice crispy crust but still retain that juiciness and not overcook the chicken all right up first we've got your classic panko now just a level up from your standard italian breadcrumbs panko of course made from a japanese fluffy white bread so it's nice and crispy and should in theory make a fantastic breading for test number one now from here on out we'll be sticking to this three-part breading and just switching up that final ingredient so first we have all-purpose flour in a bowl unseasoned then we have a few eggs whisked up nice and smooth and then that final component for this test will be the panko breadcrumbs [Music] there we go here are our first attendees looking pretty solid as you can see everything's just nice and stuck on there now super important tip here when it comes to oil you always want to stick with one of these aerosol cans why well because when i put oil on this it's extremely uneven there's no way to get that coated well but if i take an aerosol can boom even coating not too much oil which is important we don't want to load it and make it soggy so here's how i'll cook all of the chicken tenders i'll pop them in spray them just a nice even coat flip them over spray them again three eighty seven minutes get nervous so i'm gonna check it okay okay let's investigate here i'm just kind of pressing in to see if they're firm they're done they didn't get as brown as i thought but the edge browning is consistent on all of them nice and tender breading holding perfectly crispy on all sides hit them with some salt i'm gonna taste every single chicken tender with no sauce and then i'll taste it with sauce oh that's good it's like light and crispy at the exact same time which i feel like is the benefit of panko breadcrumbs you have super fluffy white bread that's dried out to give you the crispiness yeah i'll tell you one thing the air fryer is not a joke like if you were at a banquet and you had deep fried ones and air fried ones right next to each other you would not know the difference so rating on the first one is always a bit tricky especially because the only thing i'm comparing this to are those terrible fails from before the batter is just crumbling off it's hot damn it it is so light the chicken is cooked perfectly i would say my only critique is the color it's a bit light for a chicken tender it looks more like tempura so i'll give it a 9.5 out of 10. we're shifting it up a bit we've got a bunch of nuts here now nuts are something i have experimented with a bit over the years for breading and i've had mixed results but what i love about it is just added nutrition for something that could just be carbs so i have a mixture here i'm going to use walnuts which have a great oil content ideal for frying not nutritional yeast but i've got some almonds here really great flavor and heartiness to balance it out now this is not a nut it's a seed sesame seed but i'm gonna sprinkle some of those in mainly for just flavor and the look as well so i'm gonna take the walnuts in the almonds i'll add those to my food processor and just start pulsing and you're really trying to find that balance here not too fine you want a little bit of texture a little bit of coarseness but not too coarse i'll pour that out onto my plate that's when i'll sprinkle in some sesame seeds those don't need to be processed and then i'll go through the same breading process just ending on that nut mixture i mean tell me those don't look so promising i think the oil of the walnut is really going to help in our favor here for big boys spray flip spray 30 eight minutes here we go oh so the breading definitely stayed on there nice check that out pretty epic breading so this is one of those bites where you just have no idea what's coming your way here we go we'll go plain okay okay little healthy tasting to be honest i mean it is enough less crispy than i expected but that doesn't make it a bad coating let me give it a taste with that mustard a lot of things going on there definitely missing the crispiness but the flavor is incredible the breading held on extremely well and it's a good bite the nuts would be great if you mixed in something else like a bread crumb or something that at least is going to get it a little crispier so i'll give it a 8.2 we're lacking that crispiness that you need in a chicken tender but still really unique it's not crispy at all no it's kind of like mealy yeah little mealy but it's not bad it tastes really sweet it'd probably be really good with the sauce of some kind what do you mean there's a sauce right there what does that mean like another sauce now one thing i have learned over the course of my air fryer days is that when you coat something in a product that already has oil cooked into it like a potato chip something that's already fried you could use that residual oil to your advantage in the air fryer since we aren't deep frying the more oil potentially the better but i've never tried a chicken tender coated in potato chips so that's what we're gonna do so i'll add some potato chips to the food processor blend that up until i get that nice balanced texture fine with a little bit of coarseness and i'll run the chicken through the three part ready you don't really comprehend the amount of oil in a potato chip until you pulverize it like those things are oily but in this case i really think that's going to help us out plenty of oil on these things all right here we go potato chips glistening with oil now obviously potato chips have plenty of salt in them so i'm just going to do tiny bits the underside oh yeah that is a chicken nugget right there let's try one of these bad boys could be a little crispier but a decent crust internals still super juicy we'll go clean first wow there is just a potato aroma throughout that's nice let me give it a dip any mustard oh is there a honey mustard flavored potato chip here's what i'll say flavor is great potato is adding a lot in that category it's almost a little too oily to be honest push takes it down a notch i'll go 8.3 out of 10. pretty solid flavor just not the crisp i'm looking for corn flakes the ingredient that started off my obsession with chicken tenders in the airfryer basically because i had a trusted source tell me that if you do encrusted corn flakes on chicken your kids might just eat it and it worked for me and then i just started trying every breading so i know this is a viable option but today we still need to test it we need to see how it stacks up against all of these other bread so i'm gonna add the corn flakes to the food processor and just like all the other breadings i'm really going for that nice middle ground between some fine and some coarse so it coats well but then you still have some of those nice chunks that kind of stick out and get super crispy then i'll pour that on the plate take the chicken through the three-part breading fire them up in the air fryer 30 seconds left oh yeah that is that is beautiful the oil is there but the crispiness it's just drier and more crispy than the potato chips yeah i think those are perfect which one is the most perfect that one is nice and juicy look how nice the breading stays on couldn't ask for much better come on that is just as good as deep fried it's insane definitely gonna need some salt very exciting stuff [Music] right away the flavors there there was something about the panko just that first bite there was a nice lightness and crispiness but this one has that exact same crispiness with a lot more flavor and it's damn near perfect let me give it a dip though just the thought of like a honey corn flake seems right to me yeah yep wow that was unbelievable that is certainly the best one so far i'm giving that one a 9.7 i don't know what it's going to take to get a 10 but it's certainly close all right so we've got a bonus one for you and for all of these recipes we are really trying to find approachable ingredients that you might have in your pantry that also just work well in the air fryer and i was struggling to figure out this last one but mcgraw had an idea so if you park oil pasta and you know season it a bit and then cook it off in an air fryer make a little chip out of it i thought maybe it could make it and then blend that yes so i love the idea the pasta chip mcgraw didn't know this but that is a very popular airfryer item but i don't think anyone has ever pushed it to the next level where you blend that up and make a breading so we might be the first so i've got some bow tie pasta here i am just going to boil some water throw about two cups of pasta in there and boil that until it's al dente it has a nice little chew to it drain off the pasta and then go right into a bowl with a little bit of olive oil and just coat that and remember we're keeping everything unseasoned till the very end i'm gonna throw that in an air fryer at 390 for about five minutes at first and then just keep shaking it throughout the cooking process every few minutes until it is nice and crispy then i'll pop them into the food processor and blend them until they are breading consistency and then take them through the three-part breading to get them ready for the air fryer so what happened here was since i overloaded the airfryer with pasta chips some of them were a little undercooked and then when they went through the food processor they just didn't quite blend up because they were a little too soft but i'm starting to feel like it will work to my advantage because like the flakiness have you ever seen anything so flaky and we go for our final test i swear this is it now there's a little bit of oil on the pasta chips already but a little bit won't hurt all right here we go whoa wow i mean that looks like kfc style crust right there i mean the golden brown effect on this ow wow definitely the best crust so you're on to something but the taste oh my god it locked in the juiciness there's something just very strong about this crust so mcgraw did test this last night i don't know if i just cracked the code does it hold up interesting a little bit of dip it's crispy a little too hard potentially in spots it's still pretty damn good i don't think the actual pasta flavor is doing so much on this breading it's not bad it's still crispy i'll give it an 8.3 how does it compare to yours that you tested last night yeah same taste it's not bad it's no corn flake so when making the perfect chicken tender in the airfryer this corn flake chicken tender being the winner can tell us everything we need to know you are not frying you are air frying so what is most important is one getting an ingredient that already has the color built in like a corn flake and already has the crispiness build in so hopefully you learned a thing or two and you'll try out one of these techniques and thank you again to kosori for sponsoring this video if you want more quick airfryer recipes check out their channel below and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 803,841

Keywords: air fryer, airfryer, air fryer chicken finger, air fryer chicken tender, perfect chicken tender, the perfect chicken finger, fried chicken air fryer, corn flake crust, corn flake chicken, crusted chicken, cosori, best air fryer, air fryer recipes, creamy honey mustard, honey mustard, air fryer lab

Id: x1SeM_eo3yE

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2022