Frozen Chicken Tenders in Air Fryer

These are probably by girls’ favorite snacks, or lunch. Now that they’re older they can make them by themselves.

It’s so nice when they reach that age. 😉

We started with air fryer chicken nuggets and I couldn’t believe the difference.

A quick cook time plus how crunchy the outsides got. I even ate them for lunch that day! 

If you like everything crispy, including tofu bites in the afternoon…this is the way to cook all the things!

How long to cook frozen chicken tenders

Just check out the temp and timing on our chart!

• You too can print this air fryer cook times out and keep it on your fridge.
• Then next time you want to know how long air fryer fish sticks take, or chicken, you’ll know!
• Of course you should BOOKMARK my website because I share new tips and dinner recipes like this regularly too. 😉

Now it really doesn’t matter what brand you buy, but I show a picture of the variety we choose. There will likely be larger and smaller frozen chicken strips inside all packages.

Depending on the size, the smaller one will get crispier and thicker pieces won’t get quite as hot.

If you follow the directions below you’ll notice that we leave them inside the air fryer basket for 5 minutes after the cook time is up. This is important to ensure the middle gets warm all the way.

Frozen air fryer chicken tenders

1. A bag of breaded chicken strips
   1. find them in the freezer section of grocery stores
2. Any brand of air fryer

That is it my friends!! NO non stick spray or olive oil spray is necessary, they’ll get crunchy all by themselves with the circulating hot air.

I used my Ninja Foodi Grill to make these, and then threw in some air fryer vegetables once they were done. 

• They’re great with some air fryer onion rings too though.

Complete meal. Done!! If you have one of these too you can find more Ninja air fryer recipes here, but any brand will work.

I prefer the chicken breast strips variety to air fry. These cost just a bit more, using boneless skinless chicken to make into tenders but so worth it.

Here’s what you do to make air fried chicken in just 15 minutes

1. Preheat your air fryer to 400 degrees for 5 minutes.
2. Place as many pieces as you want to eat in one layer inside your basket.
3. Set cook time to 8 minutes, no need to wait ___ minutes flipping them over, they’ll crisp just fine without it.
4. Let them sit in the basket for an additional 5 minutes after the time is up to continue heating the inside of each piece.

Enjoy your fried chicken strips with dipping sauces!

Want to try other versions of fried chicken tenders?

• If you want to make a low carb version, try our air fryer chicken tenders no breading recipe.
• These homemade breaded chicken tenders are great wrapped with bacon. They take 12 minutes to 14 minutes to cook with bread crumbs.
• Then try crispy chicken legs in air fryer and air fryer corn dogs next, your kids will love these too.

Of course you can use ketchup, but our favorite chicken strip dipping sauce is our homemade fry sauce!

Printable recipe card and nutritional information for this brand of tenders is below. That will vary with the size of each piece and/or brand used.