Bacon Wrapped Chicken Bites

These BACON WRAPPED CHICKEN BITES are topped with a simple homemade barbecue sauce and cooked in the air fryer until the bacon is crisp and the chicken is juicy! Serve with extra BBQ or ranch dressing on the side for dipping!

Chicken is a super versatile ingredient in American cuisine, right?

We eat it cooked in nearly every imaginable way from Captain Crunch chicken strips, to air fryer popcorn chicken, to bang bang chicken! We serve it with almost everything you can buy in the produce section of your grocery store. Except onions, because I am not a fan of onions. 😉

One of the greatest pairings with chicken, in my humble opinion, is bacon. Bacon is the best of the best.

For this recipe, we cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces, wrapped it in a slice of bacon, and brushed with a butter-based barbecue sauce.

We are addicted to these things and you will be too!

And the barbecue sauce is on point! A little sweet, a little spicy, with a nice body thanks to the butter! I will share this recipe with you below also!

I hope you enjoy these as much as we did. This is a recipe we will repeat many times!

Ingredients:

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The bacon-wrapped chicken bites are just 2 ingredients – bacon and chicken!

However, we brush them with a homemade BBQ sauce. If you’re short on time, you can use bottled BBQ sauce, but our butter-based BBQ sauce is outrageously good and only takes about 10 minutes!

You’ll need:

• Chicken Breasts – thighs would also work
• Bacon – cut the strips in half
• Butter
• Honey
• Brown Sugar
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Chili Powder
• Salt & Pepper
• Ketchup

How to make the barbecue sauce:

This homemade barbecue sauce starts by melting a stick of butter in a saucepan. Then you’ll stir in the honey, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, chili powder, salt, and pepper.

Bring this mixture to a low boil over medium heat, whisking to melt the sugar.

Remove the sauce from the heat and stir in some ketchup.

Allow the sauce to cool for about five minutes for a bit. It’ll thicken right up.

Add about 1/3 cup of sauce to a small bowl and pop the rest in a mason jar to store in the fridge for later.

How to make chicken bites in the air fryer:

Cut up your chicken breast into strips lengthwise. Then cut those strips in half.

Take your bacon and cut that in half as well.

Wrap a single half of bacon around each of your pieces of chicken.

Place the wrapped chicken strips into your air fryer basket with a little space in between them. Do not stack them in the basket. Cook these in batches if there isn’t enough room in your basket to cook all your chicken.

Now take the small bowl BBQ sauce and brush all of your chicken bites with barbecue sauce. When you are done, discard any remaining BBQ sauce from this bowl and clean your brush, or get another one for use later.

Cook your chicken bites for 15 minutes at 380 degrees F.

Flip all of the chicken bites over and cook them for an additional five minutes.

Remove the chicken and brush it with the remaining BBQ sauce, or if you prefer, you can serve your second bowl as a dipping sauce.

Ranch dressing makes a great dip too!

Kitchen tools for this recipe

Basting Brush: These silicone brushes are easy to clean and work great.

Good knives: We have two favorite knives. One expensive, fancy knife and one budget friendly. Both are very sharp and get the job done.

Meat Thermometer: I’m a nut about food safety and I always test chicken with this instant thermometer. It works perfectly every time, is easy to use, and it’s magnetic so you can pop it on the side of your fridge so it’s always easy to find.

More recipes you might like:

• Bacon wrapped dates
• Air fryer fried shrimp
• Air fryer meatloaf
• Roasted sweet potatoes in the air fryer
• Air fryer chimichanga