The Best Spicy Air Fryer BBQ Chicken Wings Recipe

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Cooking With Anadi

12K subscribers · sweet and spicy barbecue, smoky and saucy

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It’s #WingWednesday so of course I need to share another awesome air fryer chicken wing recipe! This Spicy BBQ Chicken Wing recipe will definitely inspire you for some #WingWednesday fun!

A couple of weeks ago I experimented with these barbecue chicken wings. I posted some glimpses of the cooking process on my Instagram story, and I made a poll asking if you wanted to see the recipe. Well, the votes spoke for themselves! I received 100% of the votes saying “yes,” so here I am! Better late than never, but you asked, and I’m going to deliver!

These chicken wings will get ready in about 30 minutes! Let me tell you that the air fryer really works magic in making these wings! You’ll get really juicy wings on the inside, but the skin of the wings will be nice and crisp.

What’s amazing about these BBQ chicken wings is how saucy they’ll be! Do you like sauce? Well this recipe is for you! I’ll confess that I actually really don’t like dry wings. For me, the saucier the better! These awesome sticky wings are sure to blow you away! When I made this sauce, I had so much extra sauce to soak these wings in! You’re in for a mess of a meal, but let’s admit it - the messier the food is, the more fun it is! Your hands-on work will be kept to a minimum, so you can just let the air fryer cook up the wings and enjoy the goodness! I’d recommend taking that time to prepare some awesome Air Fryer French Fries to pair with your wings (if you’ve got a free basket!), or some Oven Baked French Fries.

If you’ve already checked out my Air Fryer Buffalo Chicken Wings recipe, you’ll see that I made significantly less. This recipe was great to experiment with because instead of cooking 14 wings, I actually cooked 24, so that influenced the timing a bit. So if this is going to be for a full on party, then you’ve come to the right place!

My stomach is rumbling as I write this and I’m taken back to that awesome night where I made these! So I should end the intro now, let’s get started!

Tools Needed

• Air fryer
• Air fryer liners
• Large bowl
• Tongs

How to Make Spicy BBQ Chicken Wings in the Air Fryer

This air fryer chicken wing recipe is unbelievably easy! Let’s get to it!

1. Pat the wings dry with a kitchen towel or paper towel and season the chicken wings with paprika/cayenne pepper, salt and pepper
2. Add a trivet to the air fryer basket and arrange the chicken wings in a single layer. Bake the wings at 350 F for 13 minutes.
3. Flip the wings and cook for another 13-18 minutes or until golden brown.
4. Toss the wings in a large bowl and pour in your favorite barbecue sauce. Remove the trivet from the air fryer, increase the temperature to 390 F and cook for another 5-6 minutes or until the barbecue sauce is caramelized and warmed through.
5. Serve immediately with your favorite sides and pour any additional barbecue sauce from the air fryer basket for a saucier experience if desired.

Tips & Tricks for Tasty Air Fryer Chicken Wings

• Pat the wings dry before cooking.
• You do not need to use tricks like baking powder or cornstarch to develop that beautiful crispy skin. The skin has enough fat to render and develop a crispy exterior. I have tried these tricks in the past, and I think they take away from the natural flavor of the chicken.
• Flip the wings after 13 minutes to ensure both sides get evenly colored.
• Make sure not to stack the wings on top of each other. If you don’t have enough space in your basket, then I recommend you make your wings in two batches. It’ll be worth it! You can always quickly reheat the wings from the first batch in the air fryer by selecting the reheat setting.
• To develop that classic stickiness for a great BBQ wing, air fry the wings with the barbecue sauce to caramelize the sauce.

There Is No Dry Rub on These Wings

Most air fryer wing recipes start with a dry rub, and this one does not. There is no garlic powder, no onion powder, no italian seasoning and no bbq rub of any kind. The seasoning before the wings go in is paprika, salt and black pepper — that is the whole list. There is no olive oil either; the wings go into the basket completely dry, which is deliberate and which the next section explains.

The barbecue sauce is store-bought rather than a homemade barbecue sauce, and a chipotle BBQ sauce is what I reach for, because that is where the smoky flavor in these comes from. These wings never touch a grill. If you want more heat in the seasoning, cayenne pepper works as a substitute for the paprika, but use it sparingly — it is a great deal hotter than paprika and it is easy to overshoot.

How to Get Crispy Wings in the Air Fryer

Crispy chicken wings out of an air fryer come down to two things, and neither of them is oil. The first is moisture: pat the raw chicken wings dry with a kitchen paper towel before seasoning them. Any surface water has to boil off before the skin can brown, and that time is the difference between crisp and rubbery.

The second is airflow. Set a trivet in the basket and arrange the wings in a single layer on top of it, so hot air can move underneath them as well as over. Do not stack the wings — if your basket will not hold two pounds in one layer, cook them in two batches and warm the first batch through on the reheat setting at the end. Crowding the basket is the single most common reason air fryer wings come out pale. This works the same whether you are cooking whole chicken wings or a bag of pre-cut drums and flats, though drums are thicker and will want the longer end of the cooking window.

Air Fryer Temperatures, Timings and When to Use a Meat Thermometer

The cook runs in two stages at two different temperatures. First the wings go in at 350 F for 13 minutes, then get flipped and cooked for another 13 to 18 minutes until golden brown. Only then do they get tossed in the sauce. Take the trivet out, turn the air fryer up to 390 F and give them a final 5 to 6 minutes — that higher heat is what caramelizes the barbecue sauce onto the skin and gives you the sticky finish rather than a wet coating. Prep is 6 minutes and the cooking adds up to 39, so the whole thing lands at about 45 minutes.

Because that second window is a range, a meat thermometer is the honest way to know when the wings are done rather than guessing from colour. Chicken is safe at an internal temperature of 165 F, taken in the thickest part of the wing without touching bone. Wings usually run past that comfortably by the time the skin is golden, but if you are cooking a batch of unusually large drums it is worth checking.

Nutrition, Serving and What to Do with Leftover Wings

Two pounds of wings feeds 4 as a main or comfortably more as an appetizer. Per serving the numbers come to 591 calories, 43 g of protein, 35 g of fat, 24 g of carbohydrates, 20 g of sugar, 798 mg of sodium and no fiber at all. It is worth knowing where two of those come from: almost all of the sugar and a good share of the sodium are in the cup of barbecue sauce, not in the chicken. Using a lower-sugar sauce, or holding some back and serving it on the side for dipping, brings both down without changing the recipe.