How to Air Fry Frozen Chicken Wings

For those times when you only have frozen wings on hand, have no worries because you can make air fryer frozen chicken wings in almost half the time as compared to cooking them in the oven!

Whether you have fully cooked frozen chicken wings or frozen raw wings, we'll show you everything you need to know to get them perfect every time. It's a WHOLE LOTTA YUM in less than 30 minutes!

 

Get ready for the crispiest Air Fryer Frozen Chicken Wings

Make our super crispy air fryer chicken wings when you have fresh chicken at home, being able to blot the chicken dry makes a huge difference in the crispiness level between fresh and frozen wings.

And if you're looking for other ways to cook your favorite frozen air fryer recipes then be sure to try our air fryer frozen mozzarella sticks, air fryer french fries from frozen, and air fryer pizza rolls.

Truth be told, if you came across this post and don't yet have an air fryer, just buying one to make wings is serious reason enough! We've literally been cooking wings every single week since buying one and my husband claims he could eat air fried chicken wings 3 times per week if I'd let him!

While we mostly cook fresh chicken wings and season them ourselves, we also love to keep an extra bag or two of pre-cooked chicken wings in the freezer for a spontaneous wing fest.

We often buy the small 1 pound bags of frozen pre-cooked and pre-seasoned wings from Trader Joes just for us OR if we know we'll be serving a crowd we get the large 4-5 lb bags of Tyson frozen chicken wings from Costco.

I cooked these in my large toaster oven style air fryer since I had air fryer frozen pizza rolls cooking in my smaller basket style air fryer. I never thought I'd have a need for TWO air fryers until I realized I sometimes wanted 2 dishes to get served together and didn't want to cook multiple batches that started getting cold while waiting on the second batch.

Serve the air fryer frozen wings with blue cheese and celery sticks OR other frozen air fryer snacks like frozen fries in the air fryer.

And if you're obsessed with chicken wings like we are be sure to try our air fryer dry rub chicken wings.

• Cooking crispy chicken wings in an air fryer take half the time as oven-baked wings
• Having frozen wings on hand makes it easy to be party or appetizer ready in an instant
• Spacing out your wings and cooking them in small batches gets them even crispier
• Our recipe works for either pre-cooked wings or raw frozen wings. Serve them with buffalo sauce, dry rub, or your favorite wing sauce.

What you'll need

You don't need much in the way of ingredients when you're cooking air fryer frozen wings! You basically just need the wings, cooking spray to keep them from cooking to the basket, and any optional sauces.

• frozen chicken wings - raw (we also include instructions for precooked frozen wings below!)
• extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt - fine sea salt isn't as strong as common table salt like Morton's, so cut the salt back by 25% if you have Mortons'.
• ground black pepper
• Optional- baking powder
• Optional - celery sticks, blue cheese dressing, Frank's Red Hot Wings Sauce

Depending on which model of air fryer you have, you can cook 1 lb, 2 lbs, or 3 lbs of frozen chicken wings. My larger oven style air fryer cooks up to 3 pounds of wings at one time, which is great for serving a family or a gathering of friends all at one time.

Variations

Instead of simple salt and pepper wings served with buffalo wing sauce, shake things up a bit by using dry rub and serve the wings with BBQ sauce or make lemon pepper wings.

How to Air Fry Frozen Chicken Wings (from frozen-precooked & cooked)

While most frozen wings you find at the grocery store are already fully cooked, if you have uncooked frozen wings on hand, rest assured you can still cook those in your air fryer as well! We show you how to cook both types of frozen wings in your air fryer below.

Pre-cooked Wings

1. Preheat the air fryer to 400F. We love to cook our meats at a higher temperature because the quick cooking time leads to perfectly a perfectly done inside yet crisper outside.
2. If you have an air fryer with a non-stick basket, it's fine to brush it with a little oil, but do NOT spray it with cooking spray like Pam. Aerosol cooking sprays can actually ruin the non-stick finish and can cause residue build-up.
3. Cook the frozen wings in the air fryer for 6 minutes on one side.
4. Flip the wings and cook an additional 6 minutes until they're cooked through.
5. It's crazy to think that air fryer frozen chicken wings cook in just 12 minutes but in an oven, they'd take 28-33 minutes!

Cooking frozen chicken wings in an air fryer won't be as crisp as if you made them from fresh simply because of the icy finish that cooks on frozen wings. Also, like in our fresh air fryer wings, we dry the chicken wings with paper towels to get them extra dry, you can't do that with frozen wings.

That being said, if you're wanting to cook air fryer FROZEN chicken wings, this is the method and cooking device to use!

Cooking Frozen Raw Wings

If you have frozen UNCOOKED wings the process is the same but the cooking time is higher, of course. Raw frozen wings take about double the cooking time compared to the pre-cooked frozen chicken wings in air fryer.

Before you cook the wings, put the wing sections, 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ teaspoon sea salt, and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper in a bowl and stir to combine.

Optional Cooking Step: Some people swear by adding baking powder to wings to get them super crisp. While we haven't tried that with air fryer frozen wings, we did add baking powder to our dry rub baked chicken wings recipe. If you're looking for air fryer frozen wings with baking powder, feel free to add in 1 tablespoon of baking powder when you mix the wings with olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper.

Preheat the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Add the frozen wings to the basket and cook them in the air fryer for 12 minutes on one side.

Open the air fryer and flip the wings and cook an additional 12-13 more minutes until they're cooked through, or until the internal temperature is at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

Serve with wing sauce, celery, and blue cheese dressing. Enjoy!

Helpful tips

• How many wings you can cook at a time depends on the capacity of your air fryer model.
• Air fryer models can cook differently from each other, some cook hotter or less hot than other models. The first time you go to make a recipe, check it a couple of minutes early in case you have a model that cooks hot.
• Cooking wings from frozen don't turn out "as crispy" as fresh wings but they're still delicious and so easy!
• To cook frozen chicken wings, lay them in a single layer leaving space all around the wings to help them get crisp.

Serving ideas

• Serve with celery sticks, blue cheese dressing, Frank's Red Hot Wings Sauce, or your favorite wing sauce.
• Serve with dips: Serve with a variety of dips like blue cheese, ranch, barbecue sauce, or hot sauce.
• Add a garnish: A sprinkle of chopped fresh parsley, chives, or even sesame seeds.
• Include side dishes: Classic sides like celery sticks and carrot sticks always work great. You could also serve these wings with other sides like coleslaw, potato salad, or French fries.
• Chicken wings can be messy! Make sure you have lots of napkins.
• Don’t forget the drinks!: Cold beer is a classic choice, soft drinks, and iced tea are perfect drinks with wings also.

More Air Fryer Recipes

• Air Fryer Chicken Wings
• Air Fryer Frozen Fries
• Air Fryer Pizza Rolls from Frozen
• frozen mozzarella sticks in air fryer
• Potato skins air fryer recipe

More Chicken Wings

• Pan fried chicken wings
• Chicken wings brine recipe
• Dry rub baked chicken wings recipe
• frozen mozzarella sticks in air fryer
• Air fryer chicken wings dry rub

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