Homemade Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken Bites

Crispy homemade air fryer popcorn chicken without buttermilk recipe. Make in your Ninja Foodi or other hot air machine. Best homemade air fryer chicken nuggets pieces and an easy finger food everyone loves.

Homemade Popcorn Chicken Recipe

This is just one of our many air fryer chicken recipes, but this is probably my kids’ favorite one. An easy homemade chicken nuggets recipe you can make plain with salt and pepper or lots of seasonings if you’d rather. But these are even smaller which means you can get them way crispier! Everyone will love these, from adults and kids.

Yes of course you can make frozen popcorn shrimp in air fryer and things in your basket too but those are full of preservatives. If you have the time I suggest you use breading with diced breasts or thighs and make these yourself. Your kids will like them better I promise.

Ninja Foodi Homemade Popcorn Chicken

I used my Cosori air fryer for this one but any brand will do. You could use chicken breasts or thighs if you’d rather. There is some heat to this breadcrumb mixture below but like I said you can alter to your liking.

If you want even faster cook time, follow our chicken fries in air fryer recipe. Those are sliced super skinny so they cook at no time at all.

Ingredients

1. Chicken breasts or thighs – cut the chicken recipe into bite size pieces.
2. Breadcrumbs – you could use Panko or traditional
3. All purpose flour will be the base of the breading
4. Egg will allow the coating to stick
5. Seasonings
   • Oregano
   • Garlic powder
   • Onion powder
   • Salt and pepper
   • Chili flakes for a bit of heat – adjust to your liking

Cube it up like you see here as small or large as you wish. Just note that smaller will cook faster so you’ll need to adjust timing accordingly. Now let’s get to the crunchy breading and seasoning those babies shall we. Just mix those seasonings and toss to coat. Then let that sit so it sort of becomes a sort of chicken marinade of sorts, like a chicken wing dry rub.

The latter would be a more low carb keto friendly option. I would adjust the cook time to 6-8 minutes flipping halfway thru if you went for that version.

Popcorn Chicken Air Fryer Time

This doesn’t take much longer than about 10 minutes total as is. With a light breading you’ll reach a safe internal meat temperature in no time. You could make air fryer chicken no breading pieces too if you wanted.

How to Make Homemade Air Fryer Popcorn Chicken without Buttermilk

1. Then you’ll want a few small bowls or plates with lips on the edges to use. One with flour, egg, then the seasoned breadcrumbs.
   • If you set it all up like an assembly line it will make this super easy to do.
2. I always suggest preheating your air fryer basket at 350F. for 5 minutes at the desired temperature.
3. One at a time, dip chicken pieces into flour.
4. Shake off excess, then dip into egg, then into the bread crumbs.
5. Place coated pieces on a piece of parchment paper to rest while you’re coating remaining.
6. Spray inside of air fryer basket with olive oil spray. Lay pieces inside without overlapping.
7. Spray top of pieces with olive oil and cook for 5 minutes, flip pieces over, spray lightly again on top and cook for another 5 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

Tips

Another tip for all food you air fry is to make sure you put all your bite size pieces in a single layer. That will ensure each piece gets hot air circulating around every inch to get to crunchy perfection. A quick spray of olive oil cooking spray is a must in my book as well. Leads to an easier cleanup and the bottom won’t stick once it’s time to flip them over either.

Can you eat popcorn chicken the next day?

As long as you refrigerated it throughout the night you could reheat chicken in air fryer. Of course they won’t be as crunchy as they were fresh but air frying them again for 2 minutes or so will help.

They will be more dried out because you’re heating them twice but you also don’t want to waste what is left over. You could warm, dice up and throw it over a salad though! OR use in make a chicken salad sandwich with it.

There are 2 recipes on The Typical Mom who uses frozen, but would be even better with this. One is our Instant Pot sweet and sour chicken, the other is our air fryer orange chicken!

If you’re serving these as is for a snack or dinnertime our favorite dips are bbq, Ranch or fry sauce. Want to try one more goodie? Try Ninja Foodi popcorn and have a pop pop pop kind of week.