How to make crispy grilled chicken wings

In today’s video, we’re in search of the best crispy grilled chicken wings recipe. We’ve heard different that different methods of drying the chicken wings prior to cooking will impact their crispiness. Today, we’re going to try a couple of different methods and then, test the results!

Chicken Wings & The Super Bowl

Hey everybody, I’m Joey. And today we’re going to have a clucking good time with a chicken wing throw down. We’re going to experiment with different ways of drying the wings before cooking to see which creates the crispiest grilled chicken wings. Are you ready to learn something? If so, follow me, and let’s turn up the tasty our chicken wing videos or some of our fan favorites. And we know that you like weird chicken wing facts. So here’s the new one. Super Bowl Sunday is a big day for wings. So big that Americans consume enough wings just on super bowl Sunday to circle the earth three times. Said another way, that’s about four wings per us citizen on Superbowl alone. That’s a lot of wings.

Prepping Your Chicken Wings

Now we love our crispy chicken wings and we’ve always just removed them from the pack, season them, and got them right on the grill. But today we’re going to try a little experiment to see if any of these different methods result in even crispier wings. So let’s talk about that. Right over here we have left these wings air dry on a rack overnight in the refrigerator. And then we’re going to see some of these right here. We’re going to Pat dry with a paper towel.

Seasoning Your Chicken Wings

Otherwise, it comes right out of the package over here. This will be like our control if you will. We’re not going to do anything additional to dry them other than seasoned them. So let’s get started. So today we’re gonna season these with our Jojo rub. This is a simple rub we created ourselves using common ingredients found in most kitchens. Probably yours too. We made a little video about it and you can find that on our YouTube channel, but first of all, let’s go ahead and get these dry. Okay.

Again, I’ve never tried this at home. This is just a little experiment, but we’re going to go ahead and pick these up, get it right in here and some paper towels and just Pat them dry. We’re going to do that for all four wings. I’m going to go ahead and make sure I’m not putting this down on a wet plate. It seems like that would impact. It’s just going to use this towel is try off a little bit of that plate there and next, we’re going to go ahead and get now that these are all fully seasoned, it’s time to get them on the grill.

Getting Your Wings On The Grill

Follow me and our other grill chicken wing video. We used low heat, that’s something we’re going to change here. We’re actually going to use very high heat and the way we’re going to achieve that is by using something called the vortex. It’s a little cone-shaped piece of metal that goes in the center of the pit and we’re going to place the wings around the exterior. The purpose of that is to really bring up that temperature. We want to see a temperature that’s about 500 degrees, so this has been heating now for a few minutes. As we can see, our coals are mostly turning white. It’s really hot over the top. So now let’s get these wings on the grill.

The next thing we’re going to do cause we’re just going to close up this lid like this, we’re going to make sure these vents right here are wide open. I also have the vents at the bottom of this wide open. If you have trouble getting your grill to temperature, one little trick you can do when using the vortex is you can leave your lid crack just a little bit. That will help bring up the temperature. So these wings are going to take about 30 to 40 minutes to get fully cooked and we’re going to be flipping them every 10 minutes. So I’m going to grab a beer now and be right back.

Okay, so it’s been 10 minutes. I got a bottle of cheap domestic beer in a can koozie of one of my least favorite baseball teams, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we’re making crispy wings. Let’s go ahead and give these a flip.

Results of our chicken wing experiment

One thing I notice is that they all have very similar colors. I’m not really seeing any color differences. It seems like maybe this section of the grill is a little hotter. Maybe just cause we’re getting those grill marks. So what I’ll do is when I put this lid back on, I’m going to move the vent to the other side of the grill. Try to balance it out. So the neat thing about this vortex is it kicks up the heat up here and it circulates around the exterior of the pit. It really creates a very similar effect to like an air fryer only it gets that smoky goodness direct from the grill. So we’ll be back in another 10 minutes. But while we’re waiting on this, I want to take you guys just across that tree line over there so you can see what’s on the other side.

Just like that. Now, one of the things that I didn’t mention earlier is before you cook your food, you want to make sure you have a clean grill. Great. Don’t use a wire brush if you’re looking for an alternative. We recently published a video on how to clean your grill grate without a wire brush. It’s a very important step because if you don’t clean it, you’ll have last week’s food on tonight’s meal and that is no bueno. So make sure you always start with a clean grill. Great. I’ll be right back.

A tip for hearing the perfect crispy sound

I don’t know if you guys can hear that at home. We can actually hear the fat rendering out of those chicken wings as they cook. Hit the bottom of that hot pit. Don’t want to get too close though. It’s real hot. We’re gonna give these another 10 minutes. I’ll be right back. Okay, so these have been cooking for about 45 minutes. It’s been about 15 minutes since our last flip. The reason why is because this thing really ate through that charcoal much faster than I expected it to. I can tell just by holding my hand over that it’s no longer 500 degrees as it was when we started, but let’s see how they sound. Yeah, let’s drill this down here. Get out of the way. So here, were you ever control group?

Here’s some of that nice crisp on there. Over here are our pet dry wings. Boy, those have an even better sound to them and over here we have our dried overnight in the fridge and see how those sound, although sound great. Well, I think it starts for the moment of truth. Let’s see how these things taste. I’m going to pull them off the grill. All right. Starting right here with the control, they look crispy. Let’s give it a taste. Good wing, nice crispy wing. You get some of that flavor from the Jojo rub coming right through and still has a ton of moisture in it. Next up here is our pet dry group. Let’s see. I’ll taste that skin pulled away a little bit. Didn’t bite as cleanly as I expected right there, but actually a little bit chillier than that one. Not quite as crispy. It sounded like it was.

Final thoughts on getting Crispy Grilled Chicken Wings

It’s a great wing, but the additional work of padding these things dry. I really don’t notice much difference against our control group over here, which were not patted dry at all. Let’s go over here and try our dried overnight ones. Let’s give these a try. Now. That sounds much crispier just tearing the skin away. You can hear here that crispiness. Wow, that’s just a great wing, super crispy. I know what day it’s going to take a little extra work. Um, the kind of meal plan and put them in the fridge the night before. I know I’m terrible at meal planning, but if you have the time, the winter is clear to me. These ones that were patted dry and sat in the refrigerator overnight. Now if you don’t have the time to make to make that happen, I would suggest just not petting them dry at all because these are just as crispy as these right over here.

Um, I don’t really see any additional difference for the additional work. Now, I had never tried either drying the night before or patting down, so this is all new to me, but I think where I have the time they’re going to go in the fridge the night before. Everybody, thanks for checking out our little chicken wing experiment. And if you liked this video, you know the drill, go ahead and hit that big thumbs up like button or even better. Subscribe toward channel for future updates. Our motto here at Red Meat Lover is cooking meat made easy, and that’s just what you’ll find in every single video. So if you like eating delicious, crispy chicken wings or any kind of meat, you’re in the right place. I’ll see you next time.