How to cook InnovAsian Orange Chicken in an air fryer

On the face of it cooking the Orange Chicken from InnovAsian in an air fryer might see a little crazy – but trust us – it works pretty well. Here’s what you need to know – be sure to read the more detailed cooking notes on this one.

1. Preheat air fryer to 400
2. Cook chicken pieces un-sauced for 10 mins at 400F
3. Turn chicken pieces after five minutes
4. Remove from fryer and add to container with defrosted sauce
5. Coat chicken pieces liberally in orange sauce
6. Return to air fryer with parchment paper beneath sauce chicken pieces
7. Cook for 3-4 minutes further

We used the COSORI to air fry this (affiliate link, we get a fee), always check your food with a good kitchen thermometer.

Cooking notes

You’ll need a couple of simple tools to master this one – notably some parchment paper and some good containers to mix the sauce in. Be sure to read out guide on parchment paper and air fryers here first.

InnovAsian make this one real simple actually, they provide the sauce and chicken separately. That means you can cook the chicken pieces to a crisp finish first. That takes about ten minutes which is just enough time to defrost the Orange sauce in a bowl of hot water.

Once the chicken is cooked through (remember to check for 165F or higher!) you can sauce the chicken in a bowl. I love to use a deep plastic tub to do this. In fact some good plastic tubs are one of my goto air fry accessories. I particular love these from Rubbermaid.

With the chicken sauced you can return to the air fryer for a few minutes to crisp back up – be careful not to cook too long and burn the sauce which has quite a bit of sugar in it. The main point here is using a little parchment paper carefully underneath the chicken; this stops the sugary sauce from melding with the fry basket. Here’s some snaps of the process: