How to Air Fry Frozen Chicken Wings

Learn how to air fry frozen chicken wings to perfection whether you have full cooked frozen wings or frozen raw wings! 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.

• 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.

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.

What you'll need

• frozen chicken wings - raw (we also include instructions for precooked frozen wings below!)
• extra virgin olive oil - or another mild oil
• sea salt
• 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 Instant Pot 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

We have a TON of chicken wing recipes on our website. You can use our method for air frying frozen wings and just change the seasoning to one of our other variations:

• Air fryer dry rub wings
• Air fryer wings with lemon pepper (and honey)
• Air fryer whole wings
• Pan fried chicken wings - made with a teriyaki glaze, brush on in the last 5 minutes
• Chicken wings brine recipe - feel free to brine your wings first!

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.

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.

1. Preheat the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Add the frozen wings to the basket and cook them in the air fryer for 12 minutes on one side.
3. 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.
4. Serve with wing sauce, celery, and blue cheese dressing. Enjoy!

Jenni's tips

• 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. Make sure to pat them dry with a paper towel too.

If you loved our recipe, please leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and leave us a comment too! Connect with us on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube!

Recipe

Air Fryer Frozen Chicken Wings

WholeLottaYum

Easy air fryer frozen chicken wings that cook in less than 15 minutes! Make either pre-cooked frozen wings or raw frozen wings with our method.

4.58 from 68 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 12 minutes mins

Total Time 17 minutes mins

Course Healthy Air Fryer Recipes

Servings 4

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 1-1.25 lb frozen chicken wings raw (see below for precooked tips)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• Optional- buffalo wing sauce celery, blue cheese

Instructions

 

Pre-cooked wings

• Preheat the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes.
• Spread the wings in a single layer in the air fryer basket.
• Cook the frozen wings for a total of 12 minutes in the air fryer, flipping after 6 minutes. Keep an eye on the wings and cook them for more or less time depending on your desired degree of doneness (plus some air fryers cook hotter or less hot than others). 

Frozen raw wings

• If you have frozen UNCOOKED wings the process is the same but the cooking time takes a little longer. Raw frozen wings take about double the cooking time compared to the pre-cooked frozen chicken wings in air fryer.
• Preheat the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes.
• In a medium-sized bowl put about 1.25 lb frozen wing sections (12-13 wings), 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ teaspoon sea salt, an ¼ teaspoon of black pepper in a bowl and stir to combine.
• The frozen chicken wings will take about 24 minutes in total to cook, this can vary depending on how hot your air fryer model cooks. Add the frozen wings to the air fryer basket and cook them in the air fryer 12 minutes on one side.
• Flip the wings and cook an additional 12-13 more minutes until they're cooked through. Serve with wing sauce, celery, and blue cheese dressing. Enjoy!

Notes

• Serve with celery sticks, blue cheese dressing, Frank's Red Hot Wings Sauce, or your favorite wing sauce.
• 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.

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!