What’s cooking today: Crispy chicken thighs, air fryer style

Succulent, cooked all the way to the bone, with superbly crispy skin. That’s chicken thigh perfection. And the best way to achieve it is in an air fryer.

For the first edition, it had to be chicken. And if it had to be chicken, it occurred to me that the best way to kick off had to be those delicious little morsels all chicken fans love: the humble chicken thigh.

I’ve loved chicken thighs ever since the seventies, when I’d go over the road to my friend Ladas Hylen’s house and she’d be cooking chicken thighs in the oven. Often, I’d be invited to join the table, and I’ve been a fan of these succulent joys of moreishness ever since.

This recipe is in four parts (don’t worry, it’s not daunting): two cooks at 180℃ for six minutes each, then 6 minutes at 200℃, plus a final quick crisp-up of the skin and crumb. That’s 21 minutes in total, so if you make the crumb first and prepare the thighs, you’ll be eating in under half an hour. 

The first session has the thighs skin-side down, the next skin-side up, and the third skin-side up after spooning a crumb on top. If I say they were utterly perfect, believe me, they were. What do you want from a chicken thigh? Meat that is tender but not pink at the bone. And crispy, delicious skin. A win, on both fronts.

I used cornflake crumbs for the crunchy topping. This is a great product; the texture is fine but very crunchy, which is exactly what you want in a crumb.

(Serves 2, maybe)

Ingredients

4 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on

Cooking oil spray

3 Tbsp olive oil

½ tsp each of ground garlic, galangal or ginger, chilli powder and white pepper

Crumb:

2 Tbsp cornflake crumbs (or similar)

1 Tbsp chopped rosemary needles

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Mix the olive oil, seasoning and spices in a bowl, and toss the thighs in it, very well, so that the thighs are fully coated.

Mix the crumbs with the chopped rosemary, spices and seasoning.

Spray the bottom of the air fryer basket.

Preheat the air fryer to 180℃ for 5 minutes.

Place the thighs in, skin-side down, with a little space between them for air flow.

Cook for 6 minutes at 180℃.

Turn and cook for another 6 minutes at 180℃, skin-side up.

Spoon the crumb on top.

Cook for the next 6 minutes at 200℃, skin-side up (for the crumb to be nicely crisp).

This being chicken, it contains fat, so some will have collected at the bottom of the basket. Carefully pour this fat off and spoon a little of it over the tops of the thighs.

Cook at 200℃ for another 3 minutes. DM/TGIFood

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

Mervyn Gers Ceramics supplies dinnerware for some TGIFood shoots.