Author: Connor
Chicken wings are a great meal to make for really any situation. Whether it is to watch the game with our friends or when my wife wanted to make a fancy meal (yes, we somehow made wings work for that) this wing recipe is my go-to for any situation. It’s easy, requires just a few minutes of prep time, and doesn’t require too much skill, which is great when you aren’t a top-notch grill master.
The Ingredients
I love making grilled chicken wings because they only require a few parts to make them good. The sauce, the chicken itself, and the seasoning, which if you want to be lazy one of those could be optional (no, not the chicken).
The Sauce
The sauce, surprisingly enough is one of the 3 parts of the wing that can be optional. If you choose to you can decide to do a dry rub chicken wing rather than a sauced chicken wing, which when doing a grilled chicken wing can be extra delicious. Personally, though, I love a good saucy wing.
I am very far from being a professional chef and therefore don’t have any amazing new sauce recipes to share with you, however, I can tell you what I use when saucing my wings. The best way I have found to get sauce for your wings is to find any premade sauce that you already know you enjoy and just use that as a wing sauce. If you like spicy wings, then find your favorite buffalo sauce! If you want BBQ wings, then grab some sweet baby rays. I have even used some sweet chili sauce in the past and it made some delicious wings that were gone so quickly I barely had a chance to try one.
The Chicken
When choosing your chicken, the most important thing is that you are grabbing chicken wings. Haha, just kidding. This part is pretty easy. Just grab some frozen chicken wings from wherever you do your shopping. You can either buy the whole wing and cut it before you cook them, or you can buy them pre-cut. Whichever you want to do is up to you. It honestly doesn’t matter.
The Seasoning
Seasoning your wings is technically optional as well if you plan on saucing your wings, although your wings will likely taste better if you choose to season them. If you are saucing your wings, your choice in seasoning isn’t as important as if you are doing a dry rub wing, but you still want to make sure your flavors make sense together. What I usually do is just find a good BBQ rub and use that for most of my grilled wings.
When choosing your seasoning for a dry rub wing it is a little more important to choose your seasoning carefully, but you will have a lot more options. There are many fun ones out there, so go for it and try something fun! I would recommend Lemon Pepper, or Salt and Vinegar seasoning! Just make sure you use a lot of it so you can taste the flavoring.
Preparation
Prep The Chicken
The first step when prepping your chicken is to decide if you want to marinate your chicken. When I was first researching how to cook chicken wings, every recipe I found told me I had to marinate my wings in buttermilk and hot sauce, which I did the first few times. They did turn out pretty tasty and I have nothing against this method, but for me personally, I found that they didn’t cook quite how I wanted them to and they were getting stuck to the grill a little more than when I didn’t marinate them.
My preferred method is to let them sit in some seasoning and oil for a couple of hours before I cook the chicken. What this usually means is I take a gallon bag and put some of my chicken (or all if I am only doing one flavor) into this bag. I then add some high-temperature oil to the bag as well, usually avocado oil, but you can use grapeseed or olive oil if you prefer, just make sure you use enough to get a little bit on every surface of the chicken. Then once I do that I spoon in several spoonfuls of my preferred seasoning that we discussed earlier. If I am not going to be saucing my chicken, then I do a lot of seasoning. Usually, more than I think is necessary.
Prep The Grill
The final step before you begin to cook your wings is to prepare the grill. It is a straightforward step, but trust me when I say, you do not want to skip this step.
Before you start your grill, you want to get some of the high-temperature oil that we discussed when prepping the chicken onto a paper towel. You will want to use that paper towel to get oil on the grates of your grill which will prevent the chicken from sticking too horribly to your grill. I have forgotten this step before and it resulted in the nice browned layer of chicken being ripped off every time I flipped my chicken, so I would highly recommend not skipping this step!
After you do that, the final step is to preheat your grill.
Grilling
Chicken Wing Placement
It’s time to get those wings on the grill! The first step is to get them placed on those grill grates. I know placement doesn’t seem important, but how you place your wings is going to affect how much work you are going to have to put into cooking the wings later.
The first thing you want to make sure you don’t do is don’t overcrowd your wings. They shouldn’t be sitting on top of each other on the grill. You want to make sure there is a little space between them so the heat can get on all sides of the chicken and everything can cook evenly. I’m not going to give you a measurement because it isn’t a big deal, just use your best judgment, that’s what I do!
The next thing you want to keep in mind is where your burners are in your grill. Even though you have burners across the whole grill, the outside edges of those burners are not the same temperature as the inside edges. If you have a small enough number of wings to fit everything near the middle, then I would recommend placing all of your wings so they all sit inside of the outermost burners on your grill. Anything placed outside of the outermost burners is going to be at a lower temperature and is going to cook slower than the rest which can make things a bit tough later.
If you have too many wings to fit everything in the middle of the grill don’t panic! You can always still use those outside sections, you will just have to keep a rotation going and remember where your chicken has been placed as you flip your wings.
Temperature and When to Flip
I like to cook my wings at medium to medium-low temperature on my grill. I have found that even though they may end up taking a while I can get some nice browned wings up to an edible temperature without blackening them too much. If I turn the grill much higher than this I end up getting a black outer shell.
When you are monitoring your wings the main thing you want to do is make sure they aren’t getting black. They are going to get grill marks which you do want when grilling food, but much more than that and they will start to taste burnt. Just keep an eye on them and don’t be afraid to keep flipping them. Just keep in mind, the longer you have the lid closed the higher the surrounding temperature will be which will allow the inside of the wings to cook faster.
When Are They Done
When trying to decide if your wings are done, the only safe way I know of is to invest in a food thermometer. I would highly recommend purchasing one of these if you plan on cooking any kind of raw meat, as it will allow you to make sure the food you cook is safe for everyone. For chicken wings, you want to make sure the internal temperature is at least 165 degrees F at the thickest part. I like to check a few different parts of the wing to be safe, but that is just me. If you are checking the temperature and somehow find that you have reached the desired internal temperature but you don’t feel the outside is brown enough, don’t be afraid to crank the heat for a couple of seconds, but be careful and make sure you keep an eye on your wings, they will burn real fast!
Sauce and Enjoy!
Sauce
The final step before you can enjoy all your hard work is to sauce the wings, but before you can do that, don’t forget to prep the sauce! This step won’t take too much effort, but you want to make sure your sauce is ready before you try to put it on your wings. First, never put cold sauce on warm wings. Make sure to either run the container under hot water or heat the sauce in a saucepan so the sauce isn’t cold when you put it on the chicken wings. If you are concerned that your sauce is too thin or that it isn’t going to stick to your wings correctly, you can always melt in a little butter and that should fix it right up!
Once your sauce is all prepared the final step is to sauce the wings. I recommend putting all the wings into a big metal bowl, pouring the sauce on top, and then giving everything a good toss until the sauce coats all of the wings. Then that is it, you are done!
Enjoy!
The final step is to sit down and enjoy your chicken wings! Thank you for reading my grilled chicken wing process and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Please check out any of my other posts (once I have them posted) and let your friends know if you thought this recipe was helpful! Thanks again!