The Reason Chicken Breasts Turn Out So Much Juicier In The Air Fryer

What do chickens and air fryers have in common? They're both versatile. Chicken is an incredibly adaptable dish, capable of being grilled, roasted, baked, fried, shredded, or glazed. An air fryer is capable of frying up anything from leftovers to snacks to entire meals to a perfect hot crisp in under half the time needed by an oven. It would only make sense, then, that such a versatile meat like chicken would go perfectly with a useful tool like an air fryer.

You could, for example, prepare The Pioneer Woman's recipe for air-fryer chicken tenders, or if you're looking for something a bit more substantial, you could follow Food Network's recipe for air-frying an entire roast chicken for a hearty dinner. From chicken wings to fried chicken, as long as you have a good recipe for chicken and an air fryer on standby, you could make all sorts of delicious poultry dishes in just under an hour.

But why exactly does an air fryer work so well with chicken? How is it that you get a perfectly juicy piece of chicken each time (assuming, of course, you're operating your air fryer to the proper specifications) instead of a dried-out tough piece of meat? Perhaps the reason for this is in the design of the air fryer itself instead of the chicken you're using.

Depending on the type of air fryer you have, you probably can't pile in a bunch of food in the basket. Even if you did, some of the food wouldn't cook right and still be cold and wet instead of hot and crispy. It is this compact design, Cook Smarts founder Jess Dang explains to Insider, that helps ensure every piece of chicken you put in the air fryer comes out juicy.

"Due to the compact design of an air fryer," Dang explains, "there's not as much room for the juices to evaporate like they sometimes do in other methods." Unlike laying your chicken out in a wide pan, the juices still remain close to the chicken instead of pooling out and evaporating as they might in the stove or the oven. If you ever pulled chicken breasts out of the oven and found juices streaked across the pan, you would easily see the difference. 

Of course, one drawback of the compact design is obvious: you can't cook as much food. According to America's Test Kitchen, overfilling the basket can lead to some foods, such as your chicken, to "steam" instead of crisp, due to lack of exposure to direct heat. Your chicken certainly wouldn't be juicy in this case. To avoid this, you'll have to add your chicken one at a time.

Although the air fryer is a perfect way to make sure your chicken stays juicy and tender, you may still be worried about the loss of moisture and juices. Obviously some juices are going to dry up with all that hot air blowing around. What can you do to make sure your chicken stays as juicy and flavorful as possible even before you put it in the air fryer?

A very simple and inexpensive method, Taste of Home tells us, is to brine your chicken in a mixture of water and salt beforehand. This simple salt water brine will help to ensure your chicken stays moist instead of tough, as the salt helps the chicken hold more moisture.

You could also follow America's Test Kitchen's advice and "dry brine" your chicken. Similar to the saltwater soak, this involves you rubbing salt into each side of the chicken, and then letting it sit for a bit before cooking. While this does take longer and is more hands-on, the salt draws juices to the surface and forms a salty brine, which then gets reabsorbed into the chicken. It's like drawing as much juice as you can out of the chicken and then redistributing it over the meat.

So long as you're careful with your air fryer, and have plenty of chicken to experiment with, you can always expect a juicy, moist, and tender piece of chicken from your air fryer.