Fried Chicken in the Air Fryer

Fried Chicken is the Best! No question about it! When I was growing up and learning to cook, fried chicken was one of the easiest and most delicious things I learned to make. We didn’t use flour to fry it, just season it and dump it on the hot oil. The skin came out crispy and with all the seasoning, the flavor was fantastic! For us, there was fried chicken and breaded chicken. Breading was an option, but not the norm.

Now here in the US, fried chicken is always breaded. Nothing wrong with that. I am a loyal fan of southern fried chicken!! I will never say no to good fried chicken.  But when I make fried chicken at home, I always go back to my roots of chicken without the breading. And when I finally got my air fryer, is like the Sky open and the Angels came out singing the beautiful news of frying without oil!!

This is my Air Fryer. It is a Maxi Matic Elite Platinum 5.5 Qt Air Fryer, got it on sale for a Black Friday 2 years ago. That poor thing has been thru cooking hell and abuse. Some of the parts are broken, and you can tell it has been used, a lot.  We use it at least 4 or 5 days a week. Somedays, it makes lunch and dinner! Next to the stove, it is second most used appliance in my kitchen. Ok, so probably do not compete with the microwave or the Keurig, but it is really close. We make so many things in that thing, sometimes I wonder how we survived without it. But I digress.

The best thing for me of this air fryer is the fact that I do not have to use tons of oil. Until the air fryer makes it appearance in my house, I fried very little. I just can’t stand oil everywhere on the stove and the smell of frying oil, not a pleasant thing after you ate your chicken, trust me. Not to mention that when you are frying, you are adding more fat to your meal. I have no problem with fat, God knows I have plenty of it. But try to cut whenever I can.

This recipe is one of the easiest recipes to make fried chicken you will ever find. You just take chicken pieces, dump a bunch of spices and herbs on them, cover them and throw them in the air fryer. That is it. As simple as that. The hardest part is actually cutting the chicken. I use chicken leg quarters because they are so flavorful and cheap! But you could very easy replace the legs and thighs with wings, chicken breast or even the whole chicken cut in pieces. The seasoning will also work for pork chops.

The hardest thing that is not available everywhere is the Sazon. Sazon is a seasoning used in Latin cuisine for seasoning and coloring. It is used in stewes, soups and rice. My  mom always thought me to use it on chicken and pork. It adds to the flavor of your meat and gives it a nice color, especially if you are frying or roasting the meat. But if you are not able to find Sazon at your grocery store, you can replace it with annatto, smoked paprika or even turmeric. You can read more about annatto on my of my posts, it is a very interesting seasoning. If you don’t have garlic paste available, replace it with 1 tablespoon of garlic powder. If you use garlic salt, then reduce the amount of salt used in the recipe.