I based the recipe off of this one, but in the spirit of the Recipes for Dads, I shortcutted most of it.
What you need:
1 Max pack of chicken thighs (about 2 lbs)
Per lb of chicken:
2 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp ground garlic
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
1/4 tsp five spice powder
1 egg white
1 cup of glutenous rice flour (really any unusual flour like sweet potato flour will probably do. Maybe even run of the mill all purpose flour).
1 cup of water
1 Air Fryer
Spray oil
Because I'm sort of a weirdo, I trimmed the excess fat off of the chicken thighs with a poultry shear. You probably don't need to do that, but I'm not a fan of biting into a breaded piece of fat. In the process, I cut up the chicken into roughly 1-inch pieces, but even that doesn't have to be terribly consistent. But do make them small so that you know that they'll be fully cooked.
I essentially mixed everything together. Yup. Even the flour, which I realized later was a bit of a mistake. The water was necessary to make everything a nice slurry.
Now, this is where I realized this goes counter to everything in my blog - this takes a long long time. You need to cook one layer at a time, ideally with no pieces really touching and definitely no overlapping. I cooked each set for 5 minutes at 390 in the air fryer, and then flipped them and cooked them again for another 5 minutes. This takes forever. The fact that I did this for 2 lbs of chicken meant that with the typical snacking we dads do while cooking, you're pretty full after finishing all of the cooking. Don't forget to spray the basket before every new batch, or you'll lose some of that yummy toasted breading. Also, if the slurry gets heavy, add more water as it's likely drying out unless it's super humid where you are. You want the chicken lightly coated, not stuck with cement when it enters the fryer.
It came out nicely.
The chicken was crisp, and the flavor was decently strong. My kid thought it was perhaps a little too peppery, so perhaps next time I'll cut down on the dried ground spices. Next time I'll also probably marinate the chicken properly and roll it in the flour like I was supposed to.
