The Best Way To Cook Chicken Wings For Finger-Licking Taste & Texture

When you rank every way to cook chicken wings, there's always one that stands above the rest: frying. Whether it's pan-frying or deep-frying, the dry heat cooking method is the best way to achieve finger-licking taste and texture. To find out exactly why that is, we spoke with Matt Ensero, co-founder and Brand President of Wing It On!

"Frying delivers the ultimate crispy-juicy balance, making it the top choice for wing fanatics," Ensero says. "The hot oil rapidly crisps the skin while sealing in moisture, achieving that classic wing experience." Most frying recipes call for you to heat oil between 325 and 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Since wings are generally small pieces of chicken, they love extra hot oil that crisps up their exteriors by the time their interiors come to temperature. Whereas breasts and thighs may need an oil temperature closer to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and longer cook times to prevent their exteriors from burning, wings develop their tastes and textures quite quickly.

Despite wings' comparative advantage of fast cooking times, they have one other advantage that may make them even better than breasts and thighs when it comes to finger-licking taste. "If you are making wings at home and want to kick things up a notch, I recommend trying a 'smoked, then fried' method for the ultimate wing experience," says Ensero. Combining the best of two different cooking methods, this trick is quite common among popular barbecue chains for its simplicity and ease.

Smoking chicken wings is one of the best ways to inject them with flavor, all while keeping yourself free to attend to other kitchen tasks. "Smoked wings have an amazing flavor that goes straight to the bone; however, the skin of a smoked wing never really gets crispy," Matt Ensero says. "This can be fixed by finishing your smoked wings with a 3-minute flash fry to yield a crispy outer skin while retaining all of the wonderful smoky flavor on the meat itself."

Flash frying is less about cooking meat to temperature and more about developing flavor and exterior texture. Much like double-frying fried chicken, the final drop in hot oil removes excess moisture from the wings' skin, replacing it with oil to create a homey, comforting taste that is the absolute best pairing for smoky poultry. The best part? The extremely hot oil crisps up the skin so well that it's practically impossible to get soggy.

White barbecue sauce is one of the best pairings for smoked wings, as its base, mayonnaise, offers the smooth, fatty taste most chicken lacks. However, if you use a fair amount of sugar in your barbecue rub, classic hot sauce or Sriracha mayo cut through the sweetness to deliver a powerful flavor. If you want something a little different, there are plenty of savory ways to use tahini to create a nutty, rich sauce that's perfect for drizzling over a plate of extra crispy smoked wings.