Recipe: air-fryer chicken wings with three sauces by Poppy O’Toole

I love how versatile chicken wings are, said Poppy O’Toole. A different sauce or flavour topping, and you’ve got a different dish each time. And they make perfect sense in an air fryer, because it’s efficient, there’s no mess, and the results are just how you’d want your wings to turn out. Flavoursome and succulent, this recipe comes with my three favourite ways to eat chicken wings.

Ingredients

• Serves: as many as you have wings for
• 100g-200g plain flour (depending on how many wings you have)
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp salt
• 6-10 chicken wings per person, segmented, tips removed
• vegetable oil, for spraying

Method: for the wings

• Heat your air fryer to 190°C. Mix together the flour and all the spices and the salt in a mixing bowl, to get everything incorporated. Tip the wing pieces into the flour mixture and give them a good toss.
• Give your air-fryer basket a little spray with some oil.
• Dust off any excess flour from your wings and place them in the air-fryer basket (for optimum deliciousness, do this in batches of up to 10 wings at a time, depending on the size of your air-fryer) and cook for 15 minutes, until golden and cooked through.
• Either enjoy them plain and crispy or try one of the saucy variations below. Just toss your cooked wings in the sauce of your choice.

Buffalo hot sauce

Simple yet effective – combine half a bottle of hot sauce (Frank’s, if possible) with 20g/1 tablespoon of butter and 1 teaspoon of runny honey. Heat it up until melted together, then toss your wings in the sauce. Voilà.

Sticky sweet soy sauce

Get a pan. Bring to the boil 2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of runny honey, 1 teaspoon of rice wine vinegar, 1 finely grated garlic clove, 1 teaspoon of finely grated fresh ginger and 1 tablespoon of tomato ketchup. Once boiling, remove from the heat, do a taste test, adjust as you fancy and, once you’re happy, toss them wings in.

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Lemon and black pepper

Grab 1 lemon, zested and juiced, 1 teaspoon of cracked black pepper, and 20g-30g/1-2 tablespoons of melted butter. Mix the lemon zest, black pepper and butter together, then add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice at a time until you are happy with the sourness. Season with salt and toss them wings.

Recipe from “Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Air-Fryer Cookbook” by Poppy O’Toole, published by Bloomsbury at £20. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £15.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

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