I love chicken wings. Fact.
Chicken wings are paleo. Fact.
Deep fryers are costly, somewhat hard to maintain, and the home variants don’t do that good of a job. Fact (mostly).
If you love wings like I do it pains you when you’re craving some crispy saucy poultry goodness but are forced to go shell out hard earned money for a mediocre pile of flabby wings because you don’t own a deep fryer.
Fret not, I got your back and the keys to at-home chicken wing nirvana.
Hardware
- 2 half sheet pans
(or one full sized sheet pan if your oven can tolerate that)
- Aluminum foil
- A spatula
- A mixing bowl
(for tossing the cooked wings in sauce)
Software
- 4-5 pounds of frozen chicken wings
- Your sauce of choice
Do Work!
- Star by covering each sheet pan with aluminum foil and spreading your frozen chicken wings out evenly. You want to use two pans because you want some space between each wing.
- Pop these pans into your oven and set it to 425F. No pre-heating, nothing, just put them in and walk away. Let these cook for thirty minutes.
- After thirty minutes a lot of fat and juices will have rendered out of the wings. Take the pans out of the oven and pour this liquid off. Get as much out as possible then put the trays back in the oven.
- If you have the trays one under the other cook the wings for 15 more minutes then switch them and cook for 10 more. If the trays are side by side, that is to say on the same rack in the oven, cook them for 25 minutes.
- Once cooked the wing will have shrunk a little but they’ll be tender but crispy and look and feel just like perfectly cooked deep fried wings. Use the spatual to pop the wings off the sheet pans and toss them in your bowl and coat with whatever sauce you like (don’t worry I’ll post some wing sauce recipes in the future)
These oven wings are not only simple and easily made without any special equipment, they’re good. The crispyness and texture will stand up against any deep friend wing you’ve had. The long cook time actually makes them even more tender then fried wings, though you lose a little size as more fat and juices render out of the chicken during this long cooking process.
I used Thai sweet chili sauce
Wings are so versatile, with so many ways to dress them up. Two of the most valuable items I own are the $99 smoker and the BBQ Bible.
With these I have been able to create amazing wings and to-die-for ribs. I recommend the wings made from this recipe, but as a personal flair I use a pre-rub before cooking and add fresh chopped cilantro and a splash of fresh squeezed lime just before serving.
Thanks for sharing man, you reminded me I need to go over my method for stove top smoking, though I need to test it because I’ve never actually done it in a home kitchen before.
Looks tasty. My dad used to grill up some kick-ass chicken wings. Also pretty easy and most people have a grill.
Stovetop smoking – Yeah, I’ve seen commercially available stove top setups, and the idea is pretty simple, but I’ve never used one, not even at work. So, I’ll be looking to read that article and see how things go.
Do these wings have to be frozen?
Just made this with fresh, not frozen wings. They came out pretty crispy, but I could have left them in longer, and they would have been even crispier. Followed the times exactly. I just got too hungry!
I played around with fresh wings and I was surprised as well to find that it took even more time than frozen ones. Dont ask me why, but I’ll be doing a post on this in the future.