I discovered this method for making baked BBQ chicken wings by pure accident. While I was making my favorite and hugely popular extra crispy chicken wings, on a whim, I decided to change the process slightly. Before I knew it, this became a new and hugely popular BBQ wing recipe at our house. I would be surprised if other wing lovers didn’t enjoy it as much as we did.
How these baked BBQ wings are made
As I mentioned above, this recipe starts off very similar to the extra crispy chicken wings recipe. However, instead of doing it at the end, I tossed the wings with the wing sauce about 10 minutes before the end. I just wanted the sauce to thicken a little. The sauce that I used that time was also slightly different – it was a mix of Duff’s BBQ sauce and their hot Buffalo wing sauce. I also bumped the oven temperature up a little to get the wings cook faster – it was a long day out on Saturday and we all wanted something as quickly as possible. These seemingly minor modifications gave me completely different results. The results were mind blowing if I do say so myself. The best part is that it takes only about 30 minutes to bake these wings. Here is a little video of my daughter making them. It’s very easy. I have since experimented more and modified the process slightly, so what you will find in the recipe below will differ a bit from the original video we made.
The result
The wings definitely lost their crispiness after I drenched them in BBQ sauce and baked for additional few minutes. They weren’t extra crispy any more but they weren’t nearly as soft and soggy as your typical baked chicken wings. Some additional experimenting revealed that if you let the crispy wings sit for 5 minutes and then toss with a sauce, they will retain more of their crispiness. Made this way, the texture was just perfect. What I liked the most about the new wings is how they came out nicely caramelized, even charred in some spots, and sticky. The high heat combined with convection did their magic. The wings turned out truly amazing and a pleasure to eat.
A few words about the sauce
Any favorite BBQ sauce of yours will do the trick. I like to use Duff’s BBQ sauce which you can pick up at Wegmans and many other places in Buffalo or online. This is what I used in this recipe. I did a 2:1 mix of BBQ and Duff’s hot sauce with some fresh minced garlic added. I’ve also tried other BBQ and hot sauces, e.g. Frank’s hot sauce, and they all worked quite well.
This recipe was updated on January 30, 2019
