Figured out why my chicken wings were always rubbery after 3 months of trying

I started using my air fryer back in January and kept making chicken wings that came out tough and chewy. I tried different temps from 360 to 400 degrees and none of them fixed it. Last week I finally looked up a video and realized I was overcrowding the basket big time. I was stuffing in like 12 wings at once when I should have done 6 max. I did a batch with just 6 wings spaced out at 380 for 22 minutes and they came out perfectly crispy. It took me 3 whole months to figure out something that simple. Has anyone else had a similar facepalm moment with their air fryer where the fix was way easier than you thought?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_derek22d ago

Sounds like you got hit by the classic air fryer mistake. Easy to do when you're trying to feed more than one person though. My facepalm moment was trying to cook frozen fries at 400 degrees for 15 minutes like the bag said, ended up with charcoal sticks. Turns out you gotta shake the basket halfway through and drop the temp to 375. Felt like an idiot after watching a 3 minute video. Air fryers are basically just tiny convection ovens that punish you for being in a hurry.

the_eric22d ago

I mean I get that you had a bad batch @the_derek but honestly the bag instructions work fine if you just pay attention. People blame the air fryer for their own impatience. You're supposed to check food not just set it and forget it like a microwave. Lowering the temp and shaking is just common sense for any cooking method. Sounds like you learned the lesson the hard way but the machine isn't punishing you. It's doing exactly what you told it to do.

jana_scott20d ago

Man, you're REALLY giving this air fryer way more credit than it deserves. @the_derek's right to be annoyed because NO bag instructions EVER account for the smaller basket, and it's not stupidity it's just bad design. It's like blaming someone for burning toast because they didn't lower the temp on their toaster.