Air Fryer Chicken Tenders

Hey guys, Justin from Cooking with Coit here. If you love chicken tenders, but you just wanna make them a little healthier, I've got the perfect recipe for you. It is my air fryer chicken tenders. And if you love this video, please hit that like and subscribe button. Let's get started. All right, so for the first step, all we're gonna do is salt and pepper these chicken tenders. So this is completely to taste. I do probably about a teaspoon-ish total for about eight tenders. But you don't have to overthink it. Just get that salt and pepper on them. Now don't forget, we're gonna be salting and peppering both sides of these guys, very important. All right, so the next thing you're gonna need are two shallow bowls. One's gonna be for the egg wash, and the second one's gonna be for the panko and breadcrumbs. Will you guys turn away while I crack these eggs on camera? Because I get kind of nervous, and I'll break the eggs, and they're gonna go all over the place. So just turn around a little bit, just. See, when you guys watch me, I'm gonna mess the eggs up. Look, look at this. Oh my gosh, okay, all right, I did it. There's no shells in the eggs. Thank you for looking away. All right, so we're just gonna beat two eggs. Now my cameraman, Anne, camera person Anne, is very judgy about how I whisk my eggs, because when she jumps in to show me, she says it's all in the wrist. Anne, will you please jump in? Anne, can you show me how to do it? Jump in, Anne, here. This is Anne. Whoa, see how good she is? Okay, all right, switch back, switch back. Okay, now that the professional has whisked the eggs, for this second bowl, we're gonna put the seasoned breadcrumbs and seasoned panko in here. Now, here's the thing. I wasn't able to find seasoned panko, but I was able to find seasoned breadcrumbs. All good. If you can find them seasoned, that's awesome, because it really saves you a step. But if not, you could use totally plain. But what I really like, the key here, is half panko and half breadcrumbs. That's gonna give you the best crunch out of your chicken tenders. This is the breadcrumbs. We're gonna do one cup of each. There we go. And here's the panko. So, if you've never heard of panko, panko is essentially just Japanese breadcrumbs. Panko is really the secret to the best chicken tenders that you'll ever make. All right, so I'm just gonna mix up the breadcrumbs and panko just a little bit. Now is the super hands-on and fun part. I'm gonna take each one of these chicken tenders, I'm gonna dip it first in the egg, then it's gonna go in the breadcrumb and panko, and it's gonna go back on this board. Now, don't worry about having to do separate boards for the raw board and then the panko board. It's all gonna be raw, so it can go right back on the same board. So, first the egg wash. You just wanna get it nice and coated. Then we bring it over here to the breadcrumbs and pankos. Now, really important here, I like to really press the breadcrumbs and panko into the chicken tender. And the reason for that is because you wanna create a nice and crispy crust, just like this when it goes into the air fryer. That is perfect. All right, so at the end of this process, you're gonna have what I call panko fingers. Do not, I repeat, do not lick them because you have raw egg and you've got raw chicken on your fingers. I have had the urge to lick these fingers with the panko. I don't know why. Don't lick them, okay? Now, we're going to spray the chicken tenders with olive oil spray. Now, the reason why I love olive oil spray so much is because it's super easy to get a really even coating across all the tenders. I also find that when I'm using olive oil spray, I'm not using as much olive oil as I would if I was brushing on the pure olive oil liquid, which then means that the chicken tenders are gonna be even healthier. So, we just give them a little spray coat, just like that. I go kind of back and forth, just like you would a spray can. Now, don't forget, we're gonna flip all these guys over and we're gonna spray them on the other side. All right, now we're gonna get the air fryer preheated so when the chicken tenders go into the basket, they're gonna start getting crispy immediately. So, we turn it on. We hit the preheat button. It's at 400 degrees at five minutes, that's perfect. And we hit the start. All right, so the air fryer just let me know that it's fully preheated. So, let's load up our chicken tenders. So, what you're gonna notice on most air fryers is that the baskets are not enormous. So, I'm really only gonna probably be able to get about four or five chicken tenders in here, max. That's okay, we just have to do them in batches. Very, very important, do not crowd the tenders. You've gotta let all of that really warm heat just move around all the tenders and if they're too close together, that's gonna keep that from happening. So, let's put them back into the air fryer and we are going to set it to 400 degrees and 10 minutes. All right, so the air fryer just hit the five minute mark. So, I'm gonna pull these guys out and let's take a look and see how we're doing. Ooh, okay, you're seeing perfect crispy, a little bit of brown on the outside. This is exactly what we're looking for. So, now we're gonna flip them over and do five more minutes in the air fryer. Back in they go and it's automatically gonna go another five minutes. One really important note, I think. Now, I swapped out my tongs from the raw ones to the ones that I'm using for the cooked food. That's really important to do, but you can always just wash your tongs if you only have one set. All right, so 10 minutes is up on the air fryer. Let's see how this first batch came out. Ooh, oh my gosh, that is perfect. I can't wait to get into them, but first I'm gonna set them aside and I'm gonna do this second batch. All right, so the second batch of chicken tenders is totally done. Let me show you my tip of how to make sure that the chicken is fully cooked. So, I use a meat thermometer. You can also, if you don't have one, you can just cut it open and make sure there's no pink showing, but I like this way because it's very scientific. So, I insert the thermometer into the thickest part of the chicken tender. All right, so the temperature reading here is 180 degrees, so that means they're fully cooked. All right, guys, taste test time. First, I wanna show you how beautifully these cooked. Let me open this one up here. Oh, it exploded with the crunchiness. Look at how beautiful these cooked. These are so good. And when you're eating chicken tenders, you've got a lot of different sauce options. You've got barbecue sauce, you've got ketchup, but my absolute favorite is ranch. So, that's what I am gonna dip them in. Here we go. Delightful. These chicken tenders are so perfectly crispy on the outside and mouthwatering tender on the inside. I know you guys are gonna love them. If you guys love this dish, check out my healthy recipes playlist for more.