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If you love chicken wings from places like Buffalo Wild Wings, then you’ll enjoy this Air Fryer Keto Buffalo Chicken Wings recipe. It’s ready in 30-minutes when cooked in the Ninja Foodi, but can be baked in the oven too. Plus, since buffalo wings go hand-in-hand with blue cheese dressing, I’ve linked that recipe for a homemade dip!
Why Make Buffalo Chicken Wings
My husband and I love Buffalo Wild Wings, which is great for keto or low-carb because there are plenty of options for everything from their Blazin’, Lemon Pepper, Chiptole BBQ, and Garlic Parmesan wings.
But, take-out multiple times per week can get pretty expensive so it’s best to make your wings at home. This recipe is one of several keto chicken wing recipes on the site that allows you to bring all the flavors of Buffalo Wild Wings at home while saving cash, and, in some cases, carbs.
How to Make These:
Like most wings on the site, making buffalo wings has the same basic steps.
- Season the chicken: I remove my wings from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before I cook them so that they can come to room temperature and cook more evenly
- Crisp the chicken: I cook the seasoned wings using the air fryer directions. But, you can also make crispy baked buffalo chicken wings (see the recipe card notes for directions below).
- Sauce: Right before serving the wings, I toss them in the sauce. This helps give the wings the crispy, yet saucy taste and prevents them from getting soggy.
Extra Spicy Hot Wings Sauce:
You’ll notice that this recipe includes smoked ghost peppers. It is totally optional to include these, but we really love our food spicy. Adding ghost peppers allowed us to have heat close to what we get when we enjoy Blazin Wings at Buffalo Wild Wings.
My favorite smoked ghost peppers come from Trader Joes, but you can get a powdered version of this online. When adding this, I usually add a dash at a time, whisk the sauce & taste. You can continue adding more until you reach your desired level of spiciness.
What to Serve with Buffalo Wings:
This recipe has about 3 servings. For me, this worked out to about 5 wings per person. To make this a meal, I pair this with a keto salad or any one of these side dishes:
To tame the heat, I also add blue cheese or ranch dressing.
More Buffalo Sauce & Hot Wing Recipes:
If you love all things buffalo and hot wings, then here are some other recipes that you should try:
- Baked Buffalo Wings
- Buffalo Chicken Pizza
- Crispy Buffalo Shrimp
- Dry Rub Wings
- Keto “Honey” Sriracha Wings
- Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Peppers
- Keto Buffalo Cauliflower Bites
- Honey Sesame Ghost Pepper Wings
If you try this recipe, please stop back and leave it a star rating and/or a review in the comments. Stay connected & share photos of your creations with me & others on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest!
Air Fryer Keto Buffalo Chicken Wings Recipe
Use DRDAVINAHS at checkout to save on some equipment & ingredients!
Recommended Equipment
Ingredients
Chicken Wings
- 1.5 lbs Chicken Wings, sectioned into flats and drums
- 1/4 tsp Natural Ancient Sea Salt
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
- 1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika
- 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1/2 tsp Onion Powder
- 1 tbsp Baking Powder, You cannot swap baking soda in this recipe – I promise that the wings will not taste good if you do. If you are on Whole30, omit this ingredient.
Buffalo Wing Sauce
- 1/2 cup Franks Red Hot Wing Sauce
- 1 tbsp Butter, or ghee if you are on Whole30
- 1/4 tsp Smoked Ghost Pepper Chiles , optional – about 2 turns on the Trader Joes grinder
Blue Cheese Dressing
- 1 Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing, omit for Whole30
Instructions
- Remove the chicken wing parts from the refrigerator and pat dry (removing as much moisture as possible helps to have a crispy wing skin)
- Mix the sea salt, black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder and baking powder in a small dish or ramekin
- Sprinkle seasoning mixture on the wings and toss to coat
- Place wings on a flat layer in the airfryer
- Use the air-fryer programmed settings for chicken (400 degrees) and cook for 25-30 minutes. I set my timer 15 minutes, flip the wings, then check the wings at 5 minute intervals until the skin is crispy enough for me. Getting the wings crispy quickly requires you to flip them about halfway through.
- Mix all of the ingredients for the Buffalo Wing sauce by stirring them in a small bowl with a fork (keep mixing until the melted butter is well incorporated)
- Toss the wings in the Buffalo Sauce mixture and serve immediately with a side of Blue Cheese Dressing
Nutrition Details
The nutrition facts come from entering the recipe ingredients into Spoonacular API, a database of food ingredients. They may vary for any recipe based on the exact product used. The keto sweeteners I use have 0g net carbs & are not included because sugar alcohols do not impact most people. This is provided as a courtesy, but you can do your own calculations if you wish!
Suziek says
I made these last night in my new air fryer and they exceeded my expectations. I look forward to trying more of your recipes. I have tried other wing recipes, but these stayed crispy when you add the sauce. Perfect! Thank you!
Davinah Cenou Montezuma says
Thanks so much, Suziek!
I’m so happy that you enjoyed these 🙂
Best,
Davinah
Andrew says
I will definitely try these as I just got an air fryer. One question, you gave nutrition info but not the portion size…..?
Davinah Cenou Montezuma says
Hi Andrew,
One serving is for 0.5lbs of meat. This is about 4-5 wing parts per person.
Hope that helps.
Chris says
This recipe turned out amazing! I’m not a fan of franks red hot so I used moore’s spicy habanero sauce (first time trying this) instead. I think the smoked paprika made a world of difference. I’ll have to experiment with this in other recipes 🙂 thanks for sharing!
Davinah says
Hi Chris!
I’m happy that you were able to make this and substitute your favorite sauce. I’ll have to check out that brand as we loooooove spicy food in my house.
Best,
Davinah
Sisley White says
This makes me so happy we can start seeing friends and family again so we can feast on delicious treats like this!
Amy says
Oh wow these wings looks so good!!
Christian Guzman says
I love that I got to use the Air Fryer again, especially for something so delicious! Thank you!
Biana says
Love that you are using the air fryer for this, makes it so simple to make delicious Buffalo wings!
Pam Proffitt says
New air fryer for me. Tried this recipe and now is my only recipe that i will use. So easy. Thanks
Davinah says
Hi Pam!
Happy that you got to make these in your new air fryer! Really appreciate you for letting me know how it worked!
I’m looking forward to making some more air fryer recipes this month! Hopefully, you’ll stop back to check them out! Happy New Year!
Best,
Davinah
Danielle says
Is there a way they can be cooked in a regular oven? First time hero and I want to finally lose some weight.
Davinah says
Hi Danielle,
The air fryer doesn’t use any oil and cuts down on time. There’s a section in the blog post that shares oven directions – 425 at 25-30 minutes per side.
Thanks,
Davinah