Air Fryer Nashville Hot Chicken Recipe

Air Fryer Nashville Hot Chicken is a great way to enjoy the classic taste of this famous hot and spicy chicken recipe without all the oil and grease of deep-fried chicken.

If you visit Nashville, Tennessee you will find Hot Chicken on almost every menu in town.

In fact, there are complete restaurants that are dedicated to serving only Nashville Hot Chicken.

Many years ago, on a business trip to Nashville, we stumbled upon the original Hot Chicken Restaurant.

Princes Hot Chicken Shack has been in business for almost 40 years. And the restaurant has been in the family since the 1930’s.

Rumor has it that Nashville Hot Chicken got started as revenge. After a long night out on the town, the girlfriend of the original owner served a chicken breakfast with extra hot pepper as a revenge.

However, he enjoyed the hot chicken so much that he and his brothers opened a BBQ Chicken Shack and served it as one of their menu items.

Now his great-niece runs and operates Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.

This is where we experienced our first taste of Nashville Hot Chicken. And boy, was it hot!!

And the funny thing is that we ordered the medium heat level. I can’t imagine what the Extra Hot tastes like!

Since that time, Hot Chicken restaurants have been popping up all over the country.

And because we love it so much, we decided that we wanted to try making it at home.

What is Nashville Hot Chicken?

For those who have never had Nashville Hot Chicken let me explain what it is.

In the most simplest terms, it is breaded chicken pieces that have been deep fried and coated in a hot cayenne based sauce.

You can typically order it with a mild, medium, hot, or blistering heat sauce.

Depending on what restaurant that you go to, you may have the option of ordering wings, chicken breast, legs or thighs.

And if you don’t order it as a sandwich, it will be served to you on a white piece of bread and with dill pickle slices to help tame the heat in your mouth.

Our local Hot Chicken restaurant also provides free Ranch dressing and tea to go along with each meal.

Which I have to say, is much needed if you order anything above the medium heat level.

Air Fryer Nashville Hot Chicken

So when I decided to try to make Hot Chicken at home, I decided to make things a little healthier and use my Air Fryer.

I had made Breaded Chicken Tenders in the Air Fryer before and they turned out wonderful.

So I decided to kick things up a notch and spice up the breading for this recipe.

I used Panko breadcrumbs so that the chicken would have a nice, but light, crunchy coating.

Then I added a few spices and the breading was ready to go.

However, I realized that I didn’t have true Chicken Tenders in my refrigerator.

So I did the next best thing and took a chicken breast and sliced it in half horizontally and then cut half into two strips.

They were the perfect size!

Hot Sauce

As I stated before, Nashville Hot Chicken sauce is cayenne pepper based.

So I started with Frank’s Hot Sauce and added to the flavor with the same spices that I used in the breading. Then I added the all important ingredient – ground cayenne pepper.

For this recipe I used 1 1/2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper. And yes, that sounds like a lot!

The heat level for this amount of cayenne turns out to be Medium. Now, by that, I mean Nashville Hot Chicken medium.

So if you like things a little less spicy, you can cut down on the amount of cayenne that you put in your sauce.

On the contrary, if you like to spice things up a little more, go for it and add in more!

But be sure to serve it over bread, with pickle slices, and have a jar of Ranch sauce and water handy!

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