Indulge in the ultimate blend of sweet and spicy with these incredible **Hot Honey Chicken Tenders**. Bursting with flavor and cooked to juicy perfection, these chicken tenders offer a tantalizing taste experience that’s both comforting and exciting. Whether you choose to whip up your own zesty hot honey sauce from scratch or opt for a convenient store-bought option, this recipe promises a quick, delicious, and incredibly versatile meal perfect for any occasion. Prepare to elevate your weeknight dinners or impress guests with this irresistible dish that harmonizes fiery zest with golden, mellow sweetness.
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Table of Contents
The Irresistible Appeal of Hot Honey Chicken Tenders
Hot honey chicken tenders have surged in popularity, captivating food lovers with their unique and addictive flavor profile. This dish brilliantly marries the comforting familiarity of crispy chicken tenders with an exciting, complex sauce that is both sweet and spicy. It’s a culinary trend that proves opposites attract, creating a harmonious balance that awakens the palate. Beyond their incredible taste, these tenders are incredibly versatile and convenient, making them a fantastic choice for a quick family dinner, an impressive appetizer for gatherings, or even a flavorful component for meal prep throughout the week. Their ease of preparation, whether you prefer homemade or store-bought hot honey, adds to their widespread appeal, ensuring a satisfying meal with minimal fuss.
Key Ingredients for Perfect Hot Honey Chicken Tenders
Crafting delicious hot honey chicken tenders relies on a few core ingredients that come together to create their signature taste and texture. Each component plays a vital role:
- Chicken Tenderloins or Breasts: The star of the show. Chicken tenderloins are naturally tender and cook quickly, while chicken breasts can be easily sliced into uniform strips for consistent cooking.
- All-Purpose Flour: Forms the basis of our light breading, essential for achieving that desirable crispy exterior, especially when air-frying or baking.
- Spices: A carefully chosen blend of spices like smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and black pepper infuses the chicken with deep, savory flavor before cooking. Smoked paprika adds a smoky depth, cayenne brings the heat, and garlic and onion powders provide aromatic foundations.
- Honey: The sweet backbone of the hot honey sauce. Its natural viscosity and sweetness balance the heat of the hot sauce, creating a rich glaze.
- Hot Sauce: Provides the crucial “hot” element. The type of hot sauce you choose will greatly influence the overall spice level and flavor notes of your finished dish.
- Butter: Melted butter is combined with honey and hot sauce to create a smooth, glossy, and indulgent glaze that clings beautifully to the chicken. Unsalted butter is preferred to control overall sodium content.
Understanding the Flavor Profile: How it Tastes
The magic of hot honey chicken tenders lies in their dynamic flavor profile. The hot honey glaze is a masterful fusion, where the inherent sweetness of golden honey meets an invigorating, spicy kick. This combination isn’t just a simple mix; it’s a carefully balanced symphony for your taste buds. The initial burst of sweetness from the honey is quickly followed by a delightful warmth from the hot sauce, creating a complex and incredibly satisfying sensation. The heat is mellowed and rounded out by the honey’s natural sugars, preventing it from being overwhelmingly spicy, while still leaving a pleasant lingering warmth. This rich, flavorful coating perfectly complements the savory, tender chicken, transforming a simple protein into an extraordinary dish. Each bite offers a harmonious interplay of sweet, spicy, and savory notes, making it irresistibly delicious and highly addictive.
Choosing the Best Chicken: What Type of Chicken to Use
When preparing hot honey chicken tenders, the type and preparation of chicken you use can significantly impact the final dish. You have two excellent options:
- Chicken Tenderloins: These are the thin, oblong strips of meat found on the underside of the chicken breast. Tenderloins are naturally very tender, live up to their name, and cook rapidly due to their smaller size and consistent thickness. They are ideal if you’re looking for quick cooking times and a consistently tender result without much fuss.
- Chicken Breasts: Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are a popular and readily available choice. While larger than tenderloins, they are incredibly versatile. If you opt for chicken breasts, simply slice them lengthwise into uniform strips, roughly ¼ to ½ inch thick. This ensures even cooking and allows them to achieve that tender texture similar to tenderloins. Cutting them yourself gives you control over the size and thickness, which can be useful for adjusting cooking times.
Regardless of your choice, aim for pieces of similar size and thickness to ensure they cook evenly. Patting the chicken dry thoroughly before seasoning is also a crucial step, as it helps the flour and spices adhere better and promotes a crispier exterior.
Preferred Cook Methods: Air Fryer vs. Baked
For these Hot Honey Chicken Tenders, we’re focusing on two popular and health-conscious cooking methods that deliver fantastic results: air frying and baking. Both methods aim to achieve a crispy exterior and a juicy interior without the need for deep frying.
- Air Fryer Method: The air fryer is excellent for speed and crispiness. It circulates hot air around the chicken, creating a wonderfully crunchy crust in a fraction of the time compared to a conventional oven. This method is perfect for busy weeknights when you want maximum flavor with minimal effort and cleanup.
- Baked Method: Baking in the oven offers a reliable way to cook multiple tenders at once, making it great for feeding a crowd or meal prepping. While it might take a bit longer than air frying, using a baking rack can significantly enhance crispness by allowing air to circulate around all sides of the chicken. The baked method typically results in a slightly less intense crisp, but still wonderfully tender and flavorful chicken.
Both methods will allow you to achieve delicious results, so choose the one that best fits your equipment and schedule!
Simplified Steps: How to Make Hot Honey Chicken Tenders
Making these irresistible hot honey chicken tenders is straightforward and requires just a few key steps. While detailed measurements and precise instructions are provided in the recipe card below, here’s a simplified overview to give you a clear picture of the process:
- Prepare the Chicken: Start by patting your chicken tenderloins or sliced breasts dry. This is a crucial step for achieving a crispy coating.
- Season and Coat: In a bowl, combine your chosen spices with all-purpose flour. Sprinkle this seasoned flour mixture generously over the chicken, ensuring each piece is thoroughly coated on all sides and edges. This light breading is key for texture.
- Cook to Perfection: Choose your preferred cooking method—either air frying for a quick, extra-crispy result or baking in the oven for a consistently tender batch. Cook until the chicken is golden brown and fully cooked through.
- Glaze with Hot Honey: Once cooked, generously drizzle the chicken with the prepared hot honey sauce. This final step infuses the tenders with that signature sweet and spicy flavor, making them utterly irresistible.
Ensuring Safety: How to Tell When the Chicken is Fully Cooked
Food safety is paramount when cooking chicken. The most reliable way to ensure your hot honey chicken tenders are perfectly cooked and safe to eat is by using a meat thermometer. Simply insert the thermometer into the thickest part of the largest chicken piece, being careful not to touch any bones. The chicken is fully cooked when it reaches a minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius).
It’s important to remember that cooking times can vary significantly based on the size and thickness of your chicken pieces, as well as the specific model of your air fryer or the calibration of your oven. Relying solely on visual cues like the color of the chicken can be misleading. Always verify with a meat thermometer for accurate and safe results. This simple step guarantees peace of mind and perfectly tender, juicy chicken every time.
Adjusting the Heat: How to Make it Less Spicy
Not everyone enjoys the same level of spice, and the beauty of homemade hot honey chicken tenders is that you can easily customize the heat to your preference. If you prefer a milder flavor, or if you’re serving individuals with varying spice tolerances, here are some tips:
- Control the Cayenne: If you’re making your own hot honey sauce from scratch (recipe provided below), you have direct control over the spice. You can significantly reduce the amount of cayenne pepper used, or even omit it completely for a very mild version.
- Choose a Milder Hot Sauce: The type of hot sauce plays a big role. Opt for a mild hot sauce brand (e.g., a mild buffalo sauce or a less potent cayenne pepper sauce) instead of varieties known for intense heat. Read labels to understand their spice levels.
- Adjust the Ratio: For a less spicy sauce, increase the amount of honey relative to the hot sauce. The extra sweetness will help to mellow out any lingering heat.
- Dilute Post-Preparation: If you’ve already made the sauce and find it too spicy, you can always whisk in a little more honey to dilute the heat. A touch of apple cider vinegar can also brighten flavors without adding more spice.
It’s significantly easier to tailor the spice level when preparing the hot honey sauce yourself compared to using a pre-made store-bought version, which offers less flexibility.
Achieving Crispiness: Breaded Chicken Options
The texture of the breading is crucial for truly exceptional hot honey chicken tenders. This recipe calls for a light coating of seasoned all-purpose flour, which yields a pleasant, subtle crispness when air-fried or baked. This lighter breading allows the juicy chicken and the vibrant hot honey glaze to shine.
However, if you’re a fan of thicker, more pronouncedly crunchy chicken tenders—the kind that delivers an audible crunch with every bite—you might consider a double-breading technique. This method involves:
- Coating the chicken thoroughly in seasoned flour.
- Dipping the floured chicken into a mixture of egg and buttermilk (or just egg if preferred).
- Dredging the chicken once more in the seasoned flour, ensuring a complete, thick second coating.
This double breading process creates a much more substantial and robust crust, perfect for those who crave extra crunch. For detailed instructions and ingredient ratios on achieving this thicker, more satisfying breading, you can refer to my Chicken Fried Chicken recipe, which utilizes a similar technique for maximum crispiness.
Delicious Dipping Sauces to Pair
While Hot Honey Chicken Tenders are incredibly flavorful on their own, a complementary dipping sauce can elevate the experience even further. Here are some fantastic options and why they pair so well:
- Ranch: The cool, creamy tang of ranch dressing provides a soothing contrast to the sweet heat of the chicken, making it a classic and universally loved pairing.
- Blue Cheese: For those who appreciate a bolder flavor, blue cheese dressing offers a pungent, savory depth that stands up beautifully to the hot honey.
- BBQ Sauce: A smoky, sweet, and tangy BBQ sauce can amplify the existing flavors, adding another layer of complexity and richness to the tenders.
- Garlic Aioli: This rich, garlicky mayonnaise-based sauce provides a luxurious creaminess and aromatic flavor that is incredibly satisfying.
- Buffalo Sauce: If you’re a true spice lover, pairing hot honey chicken with extra buffalo sauce doubles down on the heat and tangy notes.
- Honey Mustard: For a harmonious blend of sweet and savory, honey mustard complements the honey in the glaze while adding a zesty kick.
- Sriracha Mayo: Combining creamy mayonnaise with the fiery, garlicky notes of Sriracha offers a familiar and delicious spicy-creamy balance.
- Chili Lime Sauce: A vibrant and zesty chili lime sauce can cut through the richness of the chicken, adding a bright, citrusy counterpoint to the sweetness and heat.
- Yogurt Dill Sauce: This light, refreshing, and herby sauce provides a cooling effect and a fresh flavor, perfect for tempering the spice.
- Sweet Chili Sauce: To enhance the existing sweet and spicy profile, a good quality sweet chili sauce offers a delightful sticky glaze and additional zing.
- Teriyaki Sauce: For an umami-rich and slightly sweet complement, teriyaki sauce brings a savory depth that pairs wonderfully with chicken.
Complementary Side Dishes to Pair
Round out your Hot Honey Chicken Tenders meal with a selection of delicious side dishes that complement their sweet and spicy profile. Here are some fantastic suggestions:
Creamy Coleslaw: The cool, crisp, and creamy texture of a classic coleslaw offers a refreshing counterpoint to the warm, spicy tenders.
Vinegar Based Coleslaw: For a lighter, tangier option, a vinegar-based coleslaw can cut through the richness and add a bright acidity.
Air Fryer French Fries: Crispy, salty french fries are a timeless pairing with chicken tenders, providing a satisfying crunch.
Air Fryer Onion Rings: These golden, crispy rings offer a different textural element and a subtly sweet onion flavor that pairs well with the chicken.
Air Fryer Green Beans: A healthier, vibrant green vegetable side that cooks quickly and adds a fresh snap to your meal.
Traeger Smoked Baked Beans: Rich, smoky, and slightly sweet baked beans echo the savory and sweet notes of the tenders, creating a hearty combination.
Steakhouse Creamed Spinach: A decadent and creamy side dish that adds a touch of elegance and a comforting contrast to the spicy chicken.
Storage Tips: How to Store Leftovers
Proper storage is key to enjoying your Hot Honey Chicken Tenders long after they’re cooked. Once cooled to room temperature, place the chicken pieces in an airtight container. For added protection against air and moisture, you can also wrap them tightly in aluminum foil or plastic wrap before placing them in the container. Store the container in the refrigerator, where the chicken will remain fresh and delicious for approximately 3-4 days. This makes them an excellent option for meal prepping throughout the week.
When storing, try to keep the glazed chicken separate from any extra dipping sauces you might have, as this helps maintain the chicken’s texture and prevents it from becoming soggy.
Reheating for Best Results: How to Reheat
To best preserve the crispiness and flavor of your Hot Honey Chicken Tenders, gentle reheating is recommended. While microwaving is an option for speed, it often results in a less desirable texture, potentially making the chicken dry and the breading soft. For optimal results, consider these methods:
- Oven: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Place the chicken tenders on a baking sheet, ideally on a wire rack to promote air circulation. Reheat for 10-15 minutes, or until thoroughly heated through and crisp again.
- Air Fryer: This is arguably the best method for restoring crispness. Preheat your air fryer to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Arrange the tenders in a single layer and air fry for 5-8 minutes, checking periodically, until hot and crispy.
- Stovetop: A small amount of oil in a non-stick skillet over medium heat works well. Place the tenders in the hot pan and cook for a few minutes on each side until heated through and the breading is revitalized.
Always ensure the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) before consuming.
Freezing for Future Meals
Hot Honey Chicken Tenders are an excellent candidate for freezing, making them perfect for convenient future meals. Once the cooked tenders have completely cooled, arrange them in a single layer on a baking sheet and flash freeze for about 1-2 hours until solid. This prevents them from sticking together. Then, transfer the frozen tenders to a freezer-safe airtight container or heavy-duty freezer bag, ensuring as much air as possible is removed to prevent freezer burn. The chicken can be stored in the freezer for 2-3 months.
When you’re ready to enjoy them, simply defrost the frozen tenders in the refrigerator overnight. Once thawed, reheat them using the oven or air fryer method as described above for the best texture and flavor. This allows you to have a delicious, homemade meal ready with minimal effort on busy days.
Hot Honey Chicken Tenders
Brandi Crawford
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Ingredients
- 2 – 2 ½ pounds skinless chicken tenderloins or chicken breasts
- ¼-1/2 cup all purpose flour
- ¼-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ¼-1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- ¼-1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼-1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- salt and pepper to taste
- cooking oil spray I used olive oil
Homemade Hot Honey Sauce (or you can use store-bought)
- ¼-1/2 cup honey
- 2-3 tablespoons hot sauce
- 2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter Measured solid.
Instructions
Hot Honey Sauce
- Combine the ingredients (honey, hot sauce, melted butter) and stir until well combined. You can warm the mixture gently on the stove top over medium heat or use the microwave in short bursts until smooth.
Chicken
- Pat the chicken dry thoroughly with paper towels. This helps the seasoning adhere and ensures a crispier finish.
- In a shallow bowl, combine the all-purpose flour with cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and black pepper. Sprinkle this seasoned flour mixture over the chicken pieces and rub it in, ensuring both sides and all edges are fully coated. Add more spices if necessary to achieve a complete coating.
Air Fryer Instructions
- Place the seasoned chicken in a single layer in the air fryer basket, ensuring not to overcrowd it (cook in batches if needed). Lightly spray the chicken with cooking oil spray; this is crucial for crisping any visible white areas from the flour.
Air fry the chicken at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) for 10 minutes. Halfway through, open the air fryer and drizzle about half of the prepared hot honey sauce over the chicken, then gently toss to coat.
- Continue to air fry for an additional 5-8 minutes, or until the chicken reaches a minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) and is crisp to your liking. Always use a meat thermometer for accuracy. Cooking time will vary based on chicken thickness and air fryer model.
- Once cooked, drizzle the remaining hot honey sauce over the chicken. Allow the chicken to rest for 5-10 minutes before serving; this helps redistribute juices, ensuring a tender and flavorful bite.
Baked Chicken Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (220 degrees Celsius). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, then place an oven-safe baking rack on top. Lightly spray the rack with non-stick spray. (Using a baking rack is optional but highly recommended for crispier tenders, as it allows for better air circulation. You can also bake directly on parchment paper.)
- Arrange the breaded chicken tenders in a single layer on the prepared rack or sheet pan. Spritz the tenders generously with cooking oil spray. Ensure there are no dry, white patches of flour, as these areas will not crisp up properly without oil.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Carefully flip each chicken tender to ensure even cooking, being gentle to prevent losing any breading. Drizzle about half of the hot honey sauce over the flipped tenders. Continue to bake for another 10 minutes, or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius).
- Remove the tenders from the oven. Drizzle the remaining hot honey sauce generously over the chicken.
- Allow the chicken to rest for 5-10 minutes before serving. This brief resting period helps the juices redistribute, resulting in more tender and flavorful chicken.
Notes
The recipe provides a range for the hot honey sauce ingredients. This flexibility allows you to customize the flavor and spice level to perfectly suit your personal taste preferences.
If you prefer a thicker sauce, you can increase the amount of honey. For a spicier kick, use more cayenne pepper and/or hot sauce. Adjust these ratios to achieve your desired balance of sweet and heat.
This recipe yields a generous amount of hot honey sauce. However, if you adore super saucy chicken, feel free to prepare an additional batch of the glaze.
Nutrition
Nutrition Data
Macros are provided as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. This information is calculated using MyFitnessPal.com. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator. You are solely responsible for ensuring that any nutritional information provided is accurate, complete, and useful.
There you have it – your guide to creating the most delectable **Hot Honey Chicken Tenders**! This recipe is more than just a meal; it’s an experience, bringing together contrasting flavors in a way that delights everyone. Whether you’re a seasoned chef or a home cook looking for a new favorite, these tenders are sure to become a staple in your kitchen. Don’t hesitate to experiment with the spice level and side pairings to truly make it your own. Get cooking and savor every sweet, spicy, and savory bite!