Air Fryer Honey BBQ Chicken Wings are finger licking good! Quick and easy to air fry with a simple 3 ingredient marinade, they turn out sweet and juicy! Honey bbq air fryer wings let us get Winner Winner Chicken Dinner sorted without the trip through the drive through!
Just like the Air Fryer BBQ Chicken Drumsticks and the Air Fryer Portobello Mushrooms, Air Fryer recipes are amazing!
Modern recipes like our Air Fryer Stuffed Jalapenos, Air Fryer Roasted Red Peppers and Air Fryer Sausage rolls are fuss free. The Air Fryer Roast Chicken and Air Fryer Chicken Legs are family favorites!
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🤍 Recipe Highlights
Is there anything better than licking sauce off your fingers from sticky chicken wings?
Nope, I don't think so either!
It never gets old, boring or less delicious.
Easy with a quick cook time, these Air Fryer Honey BBQ wings are a must try for new Air Fryer chefs or pros looking or something different.
🥗 Ingredients
The ingredients you need are shown in the photo below, they are all simple and can be found at the local shop (you might already have some of them!). Please refer to the printable recipe card for exact measurements.
As you can see, the recipe calls for:
- Chicken wings (nibblets): these are store bought pre cut wings that require no chopping on your behalf.
- BBQ sauce: you can use a smoky or spicy barbeque sauce if you wish to.
- Honey: sweet, sticky and delicious, a fantastic ingredient to cook with!
- Sriracha sauce: hot stuff baby! Yet we only use a small amount so there won't be 'too much heat' in the wings.
- Salt and black pepper: a little of each is used to season the chicken.
- Sesame seeds (optional): a fantastic ingredient used to garnish the wings, adding a little bit more texture to them!
Grab wings which are already cut into pieces (nibblets) to save time!
Is there anything better than sweet, sticky, finger licking good chicken?
🍳 Instructions
Here are the step by step instructions to make the recipe. As you can see in the photos below, the whole recipe involves quick, easy steps!
- Combine marinade ingredients (Photo 1)
- Whisk into marinade (Photo 2)
- Brush over chicken wings (Photo 3)
- Coat both side in the sauce (Photo 4)
👩🍳 How to Make Air Fryer Honey BBQ Chicken Wings
To cook Honey BBQ Chicken Wings in the Air Fryer, we start by marinating the chicken.
Then we add the wings to the Air Fryer and cook for 8 mins a side!
You can choose to cook them as soon as you have coated them with the marinade or you can choose to marinate them (even overnight).
To cook them from frozen, (marinate then freeze) simply spray Air Fryer basket, add the frozen wings and cook.
Cooking from frozen will take longer than raw wings, so allow 30 mins cook time.
A pastry brush is the easiest way to coat the wings in sauce.
If you don't have one, another method to try is adding the wings to a zip lock bag, pouring in the sauce and massaging the sauce around the wings to coat.
You can have a look at that method in my Honey Garlic Chicken Wings recipe.
- Add marinated wings to the Air Fryer and cook for 8 mins (Photo 5)
- Use tongs to flip to the other side and cook for 7-8mins (Photo 6)
Even though the Air Fryer cooks by moving air around the wings, they still cook more thoroughly if you flip them halfway, like you would cooking them in the oven, crockpot or BBQ.
I like to sprinkle the sesame seeds onto the wings after the 1st 8 mins of cooking.
This ensures they will also cook and toast to a light golden brown colour also giving the wings a great texture!
Cooked to perfection, the photo above shows you what your wings will look like when they are ready (SO yum!)
😉 Substitutions and Variations
- The sauce works for 800 grams - 1kg of wings
- The sriracha is a hot chilli sauce that gives a little kick
- The honey provides sweet stickiness
- I use chives on top to serve (you can also use shallots)
- I also like to serve the wings with my Herbed Yogurt Sauce (and cucumber sticks)
- My Air Fryer is a 7 litre basket version
- The wings need to be in one flat layer, they can touch slightly, but not overlap
- This recipe is perfect as a game day appetizer!
- It takes about 15 mins from start to finish (8 mins, flip, 7 mins)
If you don't have an Air Fryer, here is the recipe for how to cook Honey BBQ Wings in the slow cooker or use the oven method from my Honey Soy Chicken Wings recipe.
💡 Tasty Tips
This is what I have learnt that will help you master the recipe from the 1st time and every following time:
- If you are new to sriracha, only use a teaspoon (hot sauce)
- Make the marinade, coat, then cover and refrigerate till ready to cook
- I don't need to preheat my Air Fryer, but if your model requires this, do as the 1st step
- You can pull the basket out by the handle to check how the wings are cooking along the way
- There are so many sizes and types of Air Fryers that some will cook faster or slower depending on the model.
- The 1st time you make the recipe, check the wings after 5 mins to see how they are cooking!
😍 More Easy Air Fryer Recipes
If you love Air Frying, then check out the following recipes for inspiration:
- Air Fryer Portobello Mushroom Pizza
- Fun Air Fryer Mini Hot Dogs
- Air Fryer Stuffed Jalapenos
- Quick Air Fryer Roasted Red Peppers
- Air Fryer Portobello Mushrooms
- Air Fryer Tortilla Chips
- Easy Air Fryer Pita Chips
- Simple Air Fryer Sausage rolls (perfect party food!)
- Air Fryer Cheese on Toast
Or read through all Air Fryer recipes on the blog.
The sauce you see in the photo above is the Herbed Yogurt Sauce I like to use for EVERYTHING (its TOO easy)
It is optional as the wings are already smothered in the Honey BBQ sauce, but my thinking is 'You can NEVER have too much sauce!!'
🥰 More Easy Chicken Wing Recipes
If chicken wings are your thing, you make like to try the following recipes:
- Chili Lime Chicken Wings (this recipe shows you the bag marinade method)
- Slow Cooker Sticky Chicken Wings
- Slow Cooker Honey BBQ Chicken Wings
- Honey Mustard Chicken Wings (to die for!!)
- Honey Garlic Chicken Wings
- Easy Honey Soy Chicken Wings
Try serving them with my Creamy Garlic Potatoes or Gravy Fries for a complete meal! Or opt for the Cherry Tomato Caprese Salad for a lighter It's a wing thing my friend!
Adrianne
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📖 Recipe
Air Fryer Honey BBQ Chicken Wings
Equipment
- 1 Air Fryer
- 1 Pastry Brush
- 1 Glass jug
Ingredients
- 800 grams/28 oz chicken wings Note 1
- ½ cup BBQ sauce
- 2 tablespoon honey
- 1 tablespoon sriracha sauce
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds optional for garnish
Instructions
- Add BBQ sauce, honey, sriracha, salt and pepper to a glass jug and whisk to combine
- Use a pastry brush to coat the chicken wings in the marinade(both sides)
- Place in fridge to marinate (optional)
- Spray Air Fryer Basket with cooking oil
- Turn the air fryer on to 180°C/350 F for 16 mins (if your Air Fryer needs preheating, you can do this as step 1)
- Use tongs to place chicken wings into basket in one flat layer
- Cook for 8 mins, use tongs to turn, sprinkle with sesame seeds then cook for another 7 mins Note 2
Notes
- Note 1 In Australia if you are purchasing Nibblets (pre cut wings) then generally they will be 600-800 grams per packet.
- Note 2 I like to sprinkle the sesame seeds onto the wings half way through cooking to ensure that these cook also. They will toast up very nicely. The process is in summary (cook, flip, sprinkle, turn, sprinkle, cook to get them fully coated, both sides)
- Note: Serving size for nutritional info shown is one chicken wing
Kylie says
Nope. These are not yummy. They are DELICIOUS! The whole family ate these in seconds. I made a mistake with the recipe- I should have made a double batch. Because by the time I got to the table they were nearly all gone!
Adrianne says
Haha thanks Kylie! It is great to hear they were delicious and you could have made another batch!
Tania says
So I just tried this recipe tonight and my god were these wings delicious. Possibly the best I’ve ever had!
Thank you!
Chichi | Air Fryer Yum says
The air fryer is my absolute favorite kitchen gadget and wings is one of the reasons it is. These bbq chicken wings are so good! Yum!
Adrianne says
Thanks Chichi! I appreciate your enthusiasm!