Air Fryer Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken

This crispy air fryer lemongrass chicken is a healthy and flavorful dish -- made with an aromatic lemongrass sauce coating juicy chicken thighs and air-fried to a crisp, this dish is undeniably delicious. But is lemongrass chicken healthy?

This air fryer lemongrass chicken can be a very healthy dish, consisting of 295 calories, with 46 grams of protein, 9 grams of fat, and 7 grams of carbs.

As you can see, the dish has a very impressive nutrition profile predominantly consisting of proteins, making it a great, protein-packed meal. You can easily pair it with a side of rice or noodles to make it a well-balanced meal. This makes a great weekday meal for those trying to stay fit. However, the key to making this dish help rather than hinder progress towards your fitness goals is picking the right cut of chicken and portioning ingredients mindfully.

Jump to:

• 🍎 Calories and Nutrition – Is Lemongrass Chicken Healthy?
• 🍏 How to Make It Healthy – The Fitsian Method
• 💡Tips and Tricks
• 📋 Ingredient Notes
• 🔪 Step by Step Instructions
• 🍳 Recipe

🍎 Calories and Nutrition – Is Lemongrass Chicken Healthy?

To understand the calorie and nutrition content of lemongrass chicken, it’s useful to look at the core ingredients that make up the recipe. The dish is made of two main components: the chicken and the sauce.

• Chicken:  Lemongrass chicken is often cooked with bone-in skin on chicken pieces. While very delicious, this is less than ideal from a calorie counting and macros point of view. A 4oz serving of skin-on chicken thigh has 240 calories, 19g of which are from fat. Instead, opt for boneless skinless chicken thigh, which has only 130 calories with the same amount of protein.
• Lemongrass sauce: The sauce is relatively simple here and consists of a mixture of fish sauce, sugar, and some pounded lemongrass, garlic and shallots. These ingredients does not add a significant amount of calories to the dish -- they just need to be portioned carefully, especially the fish sauce and sugar.

Looking at each component, it’s easy to see that while lemongrass chicken consists of a number of healthy ingredients, it can be made into a high calorie dish if the higher calorie ingredients are not portioned correctly, making it less than ideal for dieting purposes. This lemongrass chicken recipe will show you some tweaks that will make it low calorie and delicious.

🍏 How to Make It Healthy – The Fitsian Method

While the ingredients that go into the dish are naturally pretty healthy and don't have any calorie bomb culprits, it's still important to portion carefully and keep calorie and protein content in mind. Here's how I portioned the recipe to be only 395 calories with 45 grams of protein:

• Use boneless skinless chicken thigh — 130 calories vs 240 calories (the differential is also mostly from fat)
• Portioned out sauce ingredients mindfully, each individual component of sauce not that bad but can add up. In this recipe, the total calories from the sauce add up to about 70 calories using the measurements below
• Only used 1 teaspoon of sugar to balance out the flavor
• Air fried to achieve a delicious crisp without dousing the chicken in oil
• Used cooking spray instead of oil to minimize adding calories

For a detailed breakdown of each ingredients, their portioning, and how they make up the nutrition profile of this lemongrass chicken recipe, you may refer to the table below:

💡Tips and Tricks

How do I prepare the lemongrass?

Lemongrass are long, stalky herbs with a wood-like texture. When using, you will need to peel it back a few layers to reach the white fleshy part. Then, cut the lemongrass in thin slices starting from the white, fleshy bottom until you reach the green woody part (these are usually saved for steeping in soups or curries). For optimal flavor, pound the sliced lemongrass slices in a mortar and pestle — this will release all the flavor and juices. For more information about how to cook with lemongrass, check out this article from The Spruce Eats on How to Prepare Lemongrass.

How do I portion each ingredients accurately?

Here are some key tools I would recommend for portioning ingredients:

• A kitchen scale is an essential tool in meal prepping and portioning each ingredient as accurately as possible. Guesstimating is not recommended, as it more often than not will lead to inaccurate tracking of calories and/or macros. Therefore, you can very easily end up way more calories than you thought you did, or way less protein than you thought you did. Kitchen scales can easily be purchased via Amazon and are very inexpensive so it's definitely worth getting one!
• Measuring spoons and cups are very useful for measuring out liquid ingredients. If you don't have these, you can always measure out the equivalent amount using a bowl on a kitchen scale and pouring the ingredient(s) out until you reach the desired portion.

What do I serve with lemongrass chicken?

In this photo, I paired it with a side of garlic noodles. You can easily make this by using about 1 tablespoon of the reserve chicken marinade, mixing in 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce, and stir frying with some egg noodles. This creates a lemongrass-like aroma in a classic garlic noodles recipe. You can also pair it with a side of rice and/or vegetables, including but not limited to brussel sprouts, spinach, or broccoli.

What sauces can I pair with this? Can I make it spicy?

While the chicken is already quite flavorful, you can also pair it with some sweet chili sauce or nam prik prao (a Thai chili paste). You can also add a stronger kick by adding in a minced Thai chili into the marinade.

What brand of fish sauce should I use?

I personally love the Three Crabs Brand fish sauce. For more information about the different fish sauce brands, check out this article about the Top Ranked Fish Sauce brands.

If you liked this recipe, check out the following:

• Lemongrass Fried Rice recipe, a delicious fried rice recipe infused with Lemongrass flavor
• Air Fryer Orange Chicken Recipe
• Five Spice Grilled Chicken – Another Vietnamese chicken favorite
• Air Fryer Korean Popcorn Chicken recipe is also a good one to check out if you love the air fryer hack of creating crispy, low carb "fried" chicken
• Low calorie recipes that are still high in proteins are the number one more important recipes to consume when trying to stay fit. If you love Thai foods similar to this recipe, check out some of my favorite low calorie and protein packed Thai food recipes in my Low Calorie Thai Foods Guide
• Top 10 Favorite Low Calorie Fried Rice Recipes for more healthy and low calorie fried rice recipe
• For more quick and healthy recipes, check out my Fast and Fit Recipe Collection
• Healthy Vietnamese Food for more healthy Vietnamese recipes

📋 Ingredient Notes

Lemongrass Chicken Marinade

• 2 clove Garlic
• 0.25 Shallot
• 2 tablespoon Fish Sauce
• 1 teaspoon Sugar

Chicken

• 8 oz Chicken thigh (Boneless, skinless)
• Cilantro (For garnish)

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🔪 Step by Step Instructions

1. Gather all the marinade ingredients. Slice the lemongrass into thin circular pieces starting from the bottom of the stalk. Keep slicing until the inner purple circles disappear. Mince the shallots and peel the garlic, then put all 3 ingredients into a mortar and pestle and grind until the mixture is a rough paste. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, you can just mince the aromatics with a knife.
2. Mix the paste with the fish sauce and sugar and stir thoroughly until well-mixed.
3. Weigh out 8oz of chicken and cut the chicken into small, bite-sized pieces, trimming off any excess fat along the way. Mix the chicken into the marinade and let marinade for ideally 2-4 hours or overnight. In a pinch, you may be able to get away with 30 minutes, but the flavor may not be as pronounced.
4. Line your air fryer basket up with a pieces of aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray. Add the chicken pieces in one layer. Air fry at 380 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes. Then open the basket, flip the pieces over, and air fry for another 8 minutes at the same temperature.
5. Remove the chicken pieces from the air fryer, pair with your sides, and enjoy your crispy lemongrass chicken!

🍳 Recipe