The Best Chicken Wings At Home

I wanted to show you the best chicken wings of all time, but I couldn't decide. Do I do this sauce? Do I do that method? Do I fry them like this? So we're doing them all. This is, to me, the end-all, be-all guide to chicken wings. Of course, there are millions of sauces and I could show you every single one, but to me, these are the top three that cover the basics, right? You have buffalo, you have a sweet chili glaze, and then the third one being a balls-to-the-wall, crispy, breaded wing that is a chicken parm-flavored wing. So we're going low, medium, high here. Three levels of wings. Let's make this, shall we? I got a little lesson for you. If you're gonna make chicken wings, you need to understand chicken wings. If you want, you can get whole chicken wings. Sometimes it's a better deal when you get them this way as opposed to ordering them segmented because they segment them for you. They think you can't do this, but I know you can do this. Two to four pounds, depending on how many people you're serving. Two pounds, to me, is enough for like two people. It's a pound per person, basically. So take a whole wing, set it down on a cutting board. If you do this, you can see where the joints are based on where this moves. But the first thing I like to do is identify this little flap of skin right here. I want you to just cut down, cut away from that flap of skin and kind of open it up. So now it's not there anymore. Not everybody's okay with this. You know, it's gonna feel weird the first time you do it, but you're gonna grab the wing and you're just gonna kind of, you know, do that. When you hear that little crack, you know that you've revealed the knuckle. You can see the knuckle here now. It's popped out of the cartilage and you're gonna cut in between those two pieces. There should be no resistance. When you do that, you've now separated out the drumette. What people are really after is the flat. You can leave the tip on this if you want and nibble on that. A lot of people prefer to remove them. It's the same exact procedure. Just make sure that it's broken and that it's loosened from the wing. Locate that joint yet again, and then you're gonna cut in between. And it should remove relatively easily. Rinse and repeat with the rest of your wings. Now, once you have your drums and flats, or all flats or all drums, if you're a psychopath, if you, I don't know anybody who does all drums, but hey, teach their own. Put those into a bowl. If you did the whole wings, you can freeze the tips, use them for stock, or you can cook them with this too and nibble on wing tips. For these wings, for every two pounds, you're gonna add one tablespoon or 10 grams of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of baking soda. Just toss those together. Coat those thoroughly in the salt and the baking soda. Make sure to really massage it in there. I've got a wire rack set over a baking sheet and you're just gonna line your wings up on your baking sheet and you're gonna set this in your fridge. All this is doing is just drying the skin out so you have the crispiest wings of all time. It's okay if it's one to two hours, but ideally overnight. Our level one wing. My favorite way to make the simplest version, buffalo. You can't have buffalo without Frank's Red Hot. It's just how it works. One cup, one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and one tablespoon of white distilled vinegar. Whisk that together, set that to medium heat. And you're just gonna bring that to a very light simmer. Once that starts to simmer, you're gonna add one tablespoon of cornstarch to a bowl along with one tablespoon of water and you're just gonna whisk that until you've got a little slurry going. Thoroughly combine, no clumps. You're not gonna whisk all this in. You're gonna add a little tiny splash at a time until it's slightly thickened. So we'll add a little splash and then let that thicken. There we go. The second you notice it thickening, stop there. I'm gonna cut the heat, one clove of garlic. Again, no more heat because this will make the garlic sort of bitter and acrid, which you don't want. Whisk the garlic in. Now you're gonna whisk in half a cup of unsalted cold butter cubed, a little bit at a time. Once that butter's mostly melted, a little bit more butter and just keep repeating that until you've added all of your unsalted butter. You know you did a good job when you have a beautiful emulsified orange sauce. I mean, this is no longer red. This is Frank's orange sauce or buffalo sauce and it's beautifully emulsified. There's no breakage. It's not like one color or the other. It's one solid flat orange and it sticks to the back of a spoon beautifully, which we call nappe. It shouldn't need salt, but you can add salt at this stage if you like. I would be light on that. You don't hear that often from me. I would be light on that. Okay, so for our buffalo wings, we have our cured wings. We have a seven quart pot filled halfway with vegetable oil at 350 Fahrenheit. You're gonna add your wings two to three batches at a time. You don't wanna overfill this too much. Drop them in very gently away from you. Now you're just gonna let these fry. They're cooked all the way through and they are golden brown and crisp. It'll take roughly five minutes, eight minutes max. Now, once your wings are a nice crispy golden brown, pull them out of the oil. Whoa, drain them on a wire rack, pop them into a bowl. We have our sauce. The way I like to dress these, so we'll go around the bowl like that and then just a touch over the wings. This sauce makes enough for four pounds. We only have two pounds in here. Toss your wings until thoroughly coated. I don't want any bald spots. If you need to add more sauce, add more sauce, but you shouldn't have to. Now that they're sauced, garnish, plate and serve. Level two sauce is a sweet chili. This is a step up, it's a little bit more intensive, but not too dissimilar from the buffalo. Now I have a small sauce pot set over a smaller burner, medium heat. I'm throwing in a mixture of three quarters of a cup of sugar, three quarters of a cup of water, half a cup of white distilled vinegar and two tablespoons of your favorite soy sauce. I have two Fresno chilies that have been seeded and finely chopped and you're just gonna lightly stir that just to get the sugar incorporated with this so it's not just sitting at the bottom of the pan. And I want you to bring that up to a boil. So once this comes to a boil, we have a bowl full of two tablespoons of cornstarch. What are we gonna do with that? We're gonna eat it raw right now. You ready? Now, you're gonna get a little bit of your hot sauce and you're gonna scoop some of that up and you're going to pour it into your cornstarch and burn your hand because that's a metal bowl. And then you're gonna whisk that together until it's thoroughly combined, homogenous and there are zero clumps of cornstarch left and you're going to pour that right back into your boiling mixture and it will pretty much immediately thicken. So from there, you'll cut off the heat. You should have a beautifully thick sauce. And then to that, you're gonna add two tablespoons of sambal, any sambal you like. This is the standard, you know, clear plastic container of sambal oelek and four cloves of very finely chopped garlic and about a half inch knob of ginger peeled and very finely chopped. You know, whisk that all together. Now that's effectively your sauce. You can taste this and add a little bit more soy. You could add a little salt to taste. You could add herbs to steep in here, but ultimately this is your sauce. Let that cool down close to room temperature or just until it's warm and then it's ready to use. You could naked fry these, but these I definitely would recommend giving a dry dredge, a very light dusting, if you will, which will be one cup of all-purpose flour and two cups of potato starch or cornstarch. You know, whisk those together until thoroughly combined. You'll add all of your cured wings and then you're just gonna give that a light toss, tumble them in there, then shake off the excess, place on a separate sheet tray. So we just want a very, very light dusting. You can see how lightly this is coated with flour. It's like a thin veneer of flour. All right, now in batches, same procedure. Drop your wings in the oil, always away from yourself. Ideally in batches, you'll fry these bad boys for about eight minutes. Ah, that was really scary. Once these are nice and golden and crisp and cooked through, you can always instant read thermometer them to make sure that there's no raw chicken, but chances are if they're this color, they're cooked. Let's dress them. So we have our fried chicken. So you're gonna add all your chicken to a bowl and we have our beautiful sweet chili sauce. Again, around the edge first and then over your chicken. Just give these a nice, generous toss. Look at the glaze on that. That's crazy, ah. Once your wings are sauced to serve, you're gonna place that on a plate and obviously you can serve this with a ranch or carrots and celery or just sauced it by themselves. I like the addition of a little bit of crushed toasted peanuts or sesame seeds, but you can also just serve these straight up. Our final frontier, the third level of wing sauce, garlic parm. But this to me is the best garlic parm wing sauce I've ever made and I'm very proud of it. Please let it be known. Blender. Oh my God, I don't have a blender. Look, you don't need a blender. You can do this with a bowl and a whisk. There are many options. We're just making essentially a mayo. Two egg yolks, two tablespoons of Dijon mustard, one tablespoon of corn syrup. Now I know this seems like a weird add. It's gonna aid in the glossiness of the emulsification. So when you emulsify this and you toss your hot wings in an emulsified sauce, the corn syrup will kind of help keep it emulsified, but we'll also add a little bit of sweetness to it. The juice from two lemons. Eight garlic cloves. Peeled, please, dear God. One and a half teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves. You can do dried thyme if you don't have, that's fine. Then we're gonna add one cup of finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano garlic parm. I'm gonna not put parm in this. Theoretically, you could do pecorino, that'd be good, but then it would be garlic pecorino. I don't like the sound of that. Now, first we're gonna blend this until as smooth as possible on medium to medium-high speed. And then once that's nice and smooth, you're gonna stream in one cup of a neutral-tasting oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, or avocado oil, slowly until all of it's added and you have a beautiful, creamy sauce. So you're gonna pour your sauce into a bowl. Once you have that in there, you're gonna add one shallot, very finely chopped, one red Fresno, very finely chopped, one tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary, and two tablespoons of very finely chopped parsley. Before we mix that, remember, season with a touch of salt to taste, a little bit of fresh cracked black pepper. Just give that a nice mix together. Once you've added all that, you're essentially done, but always taste your sauce first. Does it need more salt? Does it need more pepper? This is your opportunity to add it. Don't add it later, season it to the max now. I just tasted it, it definitely needs a little bit of salt and a touch more pepper. That's our garlic parm sauce. Now, we can dress our wings with the tomato-infused crispy breading. Now, how is that possible? Well, I'll show you. We got a three-tier breading system. The first, all-purpose flour, two cups of that. In the second one, we have four eggs that have been whisked. And then to those four eggs, you're gonna add a splash of water, half a teaspoon of onion powder, two tablespoons of tomato paste, and a generous pinch of salt to taste, like around a teaspoon is fine. All right, you're gonna whisk that until completely smooth and then last, we have three cups of a nice panko breadcrumb to bread your wings, very simply. You're gonna need gloves. You also don't need gloves, it's fine. I just put gloves on so I don't get yelled at. We have our same cured wings here, a mix of flats, tremets, two pounds of that. You have a dry hand and a wet hand, so we're grabbing wet with our wet hand. You'll drop that into your flour mix and you'll kinda just toss these and tumble these together. I'm doing only a few at a time just to keep things from clumping together. You can do more, but you know, pace yourself. Now you'll shake off the excess flour so these just have a thin veneer of flour. Then you'll drop them into your tomatoey egg wash, switch to your wet hand, toss, toss, toss, make sure it's thoroughly coated, and then finally into your panko, which you'll tumble and press into your chicken to make sure it fully adheres and you have a beautifully coated wing. Now, just repeat that with all of your wings. Now we fry. 325 degree oil. We're going a little bit lighter because we're gonna have to double fry these, so we're gonna drop in our wings, probably in two to three batches so we don't overcrowd. Trying to pick pieces that are like relatively the same size. Now, we're gonna let those fry for about five minutes, roughly, till they reach an internal temperature of 165 Fahrenheit minimum. Then we'll pull them out, repeat with the rest of your wings. Then we'll increase the oil temperature to 350 Fahrenheit. Now once your oil's back up at 350 Fahrenheit, you will take your wings and put them back in there just until they're a nice, deep golden brown and crispy, like anywhere from one to three minutes. Don't burn them. Okay, so we have all of our fried wings and we have a big bowl to sauce them. Very simply, we'll place our wings in. You can do all of them at once, or you can do them in batches if you wanna like sauce them fresh each time. I'm gonna do them per plate. Get a couple flats, a couple drumettes, but let's be real, we want the flats. So you'll take your garlic parm dressing, just kinda go around the bowl again, little bit on top, then we're gonna get to tossing. If you wanna toss these a little more gently, that might not be a bad idea just because they're breaded. You can kinda turn the bowl to the side and just scoop under them and kinda let them fold over themselves. They'll eventually get coated. And if for some reason the breading is breaking off, which it shouldn't, like you can see mine is still perfectly intact, but if you're worried about that, you can also just take a pastry brush and brush that sauce on there and that works too, right? There's no like right or wrong way to do this. It's just like whatever you're vibing with. Now you have your sauced wings. When you plate these up, obviously pile them up a plate nicely and finish them off with a little bit of fresh grated pecorino or Parmigiano-Reggiano and top with a little bit of thinly sliced chives. Three wings at three varying difficulties and three completely different flavors. Buffalo. I mean, it's a crazy buffalo. Whenever I make my own wings, the buffalo always hits so much harder and it's not because I'm making it. I just mean like homemade wings over like a store-bought wing. Sweet chili, banger. And then finally the piece de resistance, this. I mean, look at these. These look insane. That actually does taste like chicken parm, no joke. Dare I say better? I know I'm supposed to talk about this whole plate, but the garlic parm finished with the parm and the tomato in the breading gives it this sort of like Italian style chicken parm in the form of a wing. It's crispy on the outside. It's luscious on the inside. If I were to pick one, my favorite one, it's easily the chicken parm. I mean, come on. Obviously a lot more effort, but these are all different levels of difficulty. So you can kind of choose your own adventure. They're all amazing. They're all delicious. But now you have, to me, what I would consider the top three wing flavors that just about anybody will find one that they love on this plate. Love you. Subscribe. Bye.