Southern Air Fried Chicken

Instagram sensation Steph DeSouza is joining me today and we're going to be cooking a beautiful recipe that's got a lot of traction. Your air fried chicken. Absolutely because who doesn't like fried chicken right? So this is a really good one for if you don't want to rip out the deep fryer it's really great to do it in the air fryer. Yeah I mean the air fryer is just so popular. I love using it because it's so easy. You know there's like two-thirds of people have an air fryer now so it is really popular. Yeah absolutely and it's not just for reheating chips and pizza. Exactly and you can do a whole chicken or just chicken thighs like we're doing today. Yeah absolutely and it's quicker I find than in a regular oven or in the fry pan and it's a set and forget which is really handy. I love that. So let's talk chicken. What type of chicken are we using here? These are chicken thigh cutlets. I'm using with the bone-in because I don't know I just find it gets a little bit juicier with you leave the bone in but if you're not a bone fan you can leave it out. Okay and also skin on. Yes. That crispy crispy. And what spices are we using for this? So we've got four different spices. We've got smoky paprika which is that beautiful southern smoky flavour. We've got some celery salt and then we have the two things that I feel like are really essential give that beautiful umami flavour. It's garlic salt and onion salt. Onion salt okay. Two ingredients I have in my pantry are very rarely used and it's so good to use up with something like this because loads of flavour. Oh my goodness yeah it really does give a really good bang for your buck by adding those those two ingredients into this it makes such a difference. The other thing that we do also is chicken stock powder. Now this I feel like is a little bit of a secret ingredient in a lot of the cooking that I do. It gives that beautiful savoury umami flavour to just about everything. It also reduces the amount of salt that you are using so if you're using that you don't need to use as much salt. Okay got it so that's our special spice rub. Yes so that's ready so all I'm going to do now with the chicken thigh cutlets is give it a bit of a glug of olive oil over the top. Not too much just a little bit just to help the spices stick really more than anything. A good grind of pepper I like lots of pepper I'm guilty I just I like lots of any spice so I guess when you're doing a spicy chicken like this you go quite you want it quite punchy yeah absolutely so sprinkle that over the top and then I'm going to get my hands in there and give it a really good rub to make sure it's completely covered. Fantastic another great thing about the air fryer is you can just pop it in without preheating it. Oh that's the magic um it I mean you can preheat it and I think a lot of recipes do say preheat but if I'm really honest I never ever preheat. So what I do is I put the skin side down so that just prevents it from getting a little bit too crispy and a little bit too burnt and then at about halfway through we are going to flip them over so we can crisp that chicken up nicely. All right so in it goes about 15 to 20 so about seven eight minutes we'll give it a flip and I see lots of herbs shall we do some chopping so many herbs let's get chopping ready for the ranch. Chicken's ready can you smell it smells delicious it really does all right do you want to take them out and pop them on the platter for me and I will start to make the ranch that goes with them so we have got some buttermilk now sometimes I even if I don't have buttermilk I just use some cream with a little bit of vinegar a little bit of lemon juice to make my own buttermilk very nice very easy got some sour cream that goes in there as well a little bit of mayonnaise and that's just adds a really lovely texture and also a nice flavor to it could you grate a garlic clove into there for me please and I need a knife for you ma'am thank you so one clove of garlic and the juice of a lemon okay oop little one got away there went for a swim saved it now I don't know about you but I like lemon a lot so if you're not a mad lemon fan maybe do half but I always do a whole one yeah absolutely then we are going to have just a little bit of sugar okay and it just helps balance that acidity and some salt yeah and a good grind of pepper very nice then the star of our show are these beautiful herbs so I'm going to put in about loads that's much fantastic why not all right so now we're just going to mix all that together and we have a combination of dill coriander chives and parsley absolutely now if you don't have those you can you can make it up as you go along really but we're lucky here we and can we just have a look how gorgeous this chicken is that skin this is why if you can get the skin on get it because it blisters up like that and it just becomes so nice absolutely and the air fryer is just perfect for that yeah and no stinky smoke anywhere um relatively easy to clean you throw them in the dishwasher so yeah it's a nice practical tool to have really nice well we've got extra herbs shall I maybe sprinkle a few over here make it look pretty beautiful all right ready for some serious dipping action yes beautiful and you want that chicken to come out of the air fryer plate it up just let it sit there for a moment because it's going to be extra extra juicy you just don't want to dig into it straight away no no absolutely sometimes I just leave it in the air fryer yeah for three or four minutes keeps it nice and warm lets it rest beautifully and keeps that juice in very nice serve that with your ranch sauce that is one epic meal right there cheers steph thank you