Wings Around Waukesha: Homemade Wings

As you know, hubby and I love chicken wings and try them whenever we can.

About a year ago, hubby and I made wings at home for the first time. It was definitely a new experience for both of us and it turned out so well. The wings were oven baked and amazing–I couldn’t have asked for a better first experience.

The worst part of making wings is having to separate the wingette from the drumette. My coworker told me about Cermak and that it has an incredible butcher department. I went and checked it out for myself. Indeed the butcher department was very impressive with every cut of meat you can imagine. I was able to find packages of fresh chicken wingettes and drumettes already separated. Hubby was so excited we were going to have homemade wings again!

I couldn’t find the original recipe that I used to cook the chicken wings the last time, but relied on Pinterest, and the amazing bloggers that share their recipes on the platform, to guide to me to another good one.

I put all the wings in a big bowl and sprinkled baking powder and salt over them and flipped them around. The next step was to put them on wire racks over baking sheets. A recommendation would be to foil cover the baking sheets for easier cleanup.

This recipe has the wings bake at a low temp for the first 30 minutes and then you raise the temp for the last 40 minutes. During that time, I made the sauces.

Searching chicken wing sauces on Pinterest brings a ridiculous amount of pins. But one struck my interest right away–copycat Buffalo Wild Wing sauces. My hubby loves BW3s so I asked him to pick his faves for dinner–he chose Parmesan Garlic and Asian Zing.

I had everything for the Parmesan garlic, but I was missing Sriracha for the Asian Zing. I subbed cayenne and Frank’s Red Hot. I also recently bought an Apricot Bourbon sauce so I added a tablespoon of butter to thin it out and gave us three choices.

I recommend keeping your wing sauces warmer so when the wings are dipped in them, they don’t cool down. And sauces with a butter base will thicken when not kept warm (as you can see in the photo above.) The surface of my stove gets warm when the oven is on, so I put the sauces on it so warm up.

Though the recipe didn’t call for it, I flipped the wings with about 10 minutes left.

I let the wings rest for five minutes when they came out of the oven and then it was everyone from themselves! Not really, but I showed hubby how to sauce them up and we went to town. Place a few wings in your sauce of choice and flip them around. Using tongs, I grabbed them out, let them drip off, and then plated them up.

My favorite sauce was the Parmesan garlic (right). The Asian zing (center) ended up rather runny, my guess because of my Frank’s sub instead of sriracha that is thicker. But the flavor was there. Apricot Bourbon was good as well (left).

Though the sauces coated the wings, the wings stayed nice and crispy. This was definitely a success and I have since pinned the recipe to be able to find it in the future.

I also used my air fryer for the first time to make homemade fries. I will share my thoughts on the air fryer once I use it a bit more. But so far, so good!

Have you ever made wings at home? What are your favorite wing sauces?

Zubleton Wings Rating (Max Score of 5): 4.5

Flavors: 4.5 Drumsticks (I offered 3, which hubby said was pretty awesome being we were home, but ultimately could have made as many as I want.) 

Size: 4.5 Drumsticks 

Taste: 4 Drumsticks – the runny Asian zing was what brought this down. 

Price: 4.5 Drumsticks (.43 each – I had all the ingredients already at home for the sauces)

Temp: 5 Drumsticks – nice and hot

Sauces: Ranch

Veggies: Celery and carrots 🙂

Wet Naps: napkins while eating, plenty of soap and sinks to wash up with